Almost everybody has an old computer lying around the house. This story is a great example of why you have to be careful before that computer leaves your home.

Jason Miller of Steelton is a handy guy. He refurbishes old computers and sells them on eBay. Miller said he found one at a flea market the other day.

"And I was walking around," said Miller. "I found a computer and I asked the guy how much he wanted for it and he said he wanted five dollars for it."

A new power supply and a mother board later, the old computer was cranking again. Then Jason saw what was still on the computer's hard drive.

"All the lady's information was still on the computer," said Miller. "Her resume, case logs with her social security number on it. Somebody could have got a hold of her identity and taken over the whole thing." But Miller did the right thing.

"Maybe not even a week later I get an email message on Yahoo and a gentlemen said I got your computer at a flea market," said Norma Kenley-Barber of Harrisburg.

Norma thought the computer store that diagnosed her old machine's problems had also cleared all the data from the hard drive. She decided to pitch the computer instead of fixing it.

"I said, 'I'm not going to keep this. I'm not going to lug it around.' So I put it outside for trash," said Kenley-Barber.

How it got to the flea market, no one knows. Miller said he's removing all the old personal information before he sells the restored computer on eBay. Norma is just glad her old machine fell into the hands of an honest man.

"I appreciate him," she said. "I don't know who his parents, are but they raised a very nice person."

There is software that can "overwrite" the data on a computer's hard drive and make it unreadable. But some experts say the only way to be absolutely safe is to remove the old hard drive before you part with the computer and destroy that hard drive.