FORT MYERS, Fla. - CALL FOR ACTION easily found information like your name, your social security number, your credit card number, even your prescriptions. We only paid $50 bucks to get it.

You work hard to protect your personal information.

"There's so many people who try and rip you off so you have to," Fort Myers resident Mike Haas told WINK NEWS.

You check your credit regularly.

"I've put passwords on some of my credit cards," Fort Myers Resident Faith Sorenson told WINK NEWS.

You shred all your documents.

"Any bills credit card information," Ronald Tedford told WINK NEWS about what he chooses to shred.

You guard your social security number.

"I actually had identity fraud a couple of years ago," Haas told WINK NEWS, "So I know it's a pain to try and get it fixed."

CALL FOR ACTION discovered the personal information you work hard to protect might be for sale on eBay. We simply typed in "used hard drives" on eBay and within minutes, we bought ten used hard drives. $50 bucks and a couple days later, the hard drives came in the mail.

We took the drives to a computer expert to see what was on them.

"Were you surprised when you looked at these how readily available this information was on these drives?" asked CALL FOR ACTION Reporter Melissa Yeager.

"Shocked is probably more the term," said John Benkert of CPR Tools, a data recovery service in LaBelle.

Benkert looked at the drives for CALL FOR ACTION, and quickly found information, a lot of information. Information that can be used to steal some body's identity.

CALL FOR ACTION Reporter Melissa Yeager asked, "Fair to say this was not a complicated process for someone who knows what they're doing?"

"It was not a complicated process for someone who knows what they're doing. it's not a complicated process for someone who doesn't know what they're doing," said Benkert.

On one drive he found data for 200 financial transactions that appear to be from US Trust of New York, a company that manages money for wealthy clients.

The largest transaction he found involved just under $2 million dollars.

The records also contain what appears to be names, addresses, account numbers and Social Security numbers.

Another drive appears to come from the grocery store chain Giant of Maryland. It contains more than a thousand pharmacy prescriptions and 25 hundred suspected credit card numbers.

Two other drives we bought contain service calls from Sears. The data contained names, addresses and instructions, like how to get to customers' homes, where they kept spare keys, and more than 750 suspected credit card numbers.

"How easily do you think a crook could have taken this information?" asked CALL FOR ACTION Reporter Melissa Yeager.

Benkert replied, "Oh very easily. Anyone with limited computer knowledge could have gotten this information off these hard drives and done anything with them."

How was all of this personal information allowed to get in CALL FOR ACTION'S hands? The drives we bought on eBay for $50 bucks came from a company called PC Products and Services.

Chicago based PC Products told WINK NEWS they have no idea where they got the hard drives.

Our experts tell us the information on these drives can very easily be used for identity theft.

"To see what we saw on your drives really did shock us," said Benkert.

We also consulted a second computer expert to confirm our results.

Then we contacted Giant of Maryland, Sears, and the company who now owns US Trust of New York.

Sears issued WINK NEWS this statement: "Sears Holdings takes the safety of our customer's data very seriously. While we are not able to identify the source of the hard drive with the current information provided at this time, it is Sears' policy that the redeployment of computer equipment requires electronic media be completely sanitized making the data unreadable. We will continue to investigate this matter."

US Trust of New York was bought by another back last year. That bank says it has no record and no way to figure out how US Trust of New York would have ended up on eBay.

Giant of Maryland, however, immediately sent a team of technicians here to Fort Myers to inspect the data and issued us this statement: "Information security is of paramount importance to Giant of Maryland and we devote extensive resources to ensure the protection of our sensitive data, especially information pertaining to our customers and employees. We take very seriously any possible loss or compromise of sensitive data, including the information we received last week from WINK News in Ft. Myers, Florida, indicating that a hard drive which was purchased from a reseller on EBay possibly contains data pertaining to the pharmacy customers and employees of one Giant of Maryland store. We are investigating this matter and will take appropriate corrective action, if necessary. Giant of Maryland has not received any reports of fraudulent activity involving any customer or employee in connection with this matter."