Bank of America's CEO, Brian Moynihan, must have had a rough Sunday evening. At approximately 11:00PM EST on October 23rd, 2011, the hacker collective Anonymous posted financial and personal information for the bank's CEO on one of its popular Tumblr blog sites. They unveiled how much Moynihan earns as a salary, his stock bonuses, his home address in Massachusetts, his personal phone number, and every court case in which he's currently involved.

While much of this information could be found by a determined investigator, it's a different story when Anonymous posts the information on its own high-traffic sites. In support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Anonymous has been targeting high-ranking bank officials in hacking attempts recently. The hacker groups are protesting a number of issues, including the banks for being recipients of government bailout programs as well as new and increasing fees.

Only a week ago, the "CabinCr3w" segment of Anonymous publicly posted the personal information of CitiGroup's CEO, Vikram Pandit, including his cell phone number, his wife's full name, his address, among other personal data. Prior to that, they published personal information from Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfien and Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe. This latest leak of Bank of America's Brian Moynihan is just another day in the activities of Anonymous.

The group was also involved in publicizing personal information from dozens of law enforcement officers following San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit's shutdown of cell phone service during an Anonymous protest back in August. It seems that whenever a company or group does anything that's contrary to the free flow of information, the rights of citizens to gather in protest, or the wholesale theft of billions of taxpayer dollars, a group of hackers is ready to pounce and retaliate.

Hacking For Fun and Profit

While these tactics may not win them any friends in high places, they are certainly getting the attention of high ranking officials around the world. For most of this year, officials have been arresting individuals in connection with Anonymous, LulzSec, and countless other offshoot organizations involved with hacking and publicizing their findings. Very few convictions have been announced yet, and the most interesting piece of all of this is that the majority of these hackers are not in it for the money.

In fact, those who don't have a political agenda to push have generally only been doing this for laughs and Internet fame. What's more disturbing is that these hacking groups are only the ones who have publicized their activities. Countless more hackers are working behind the scenes in complete radio silence. Those are the ones we need to be worried about.

Undergound hacking groups have created a vast network of criminal sharing of personal information. When a single website is hacked, the database can often be dumped to reveal the passwords and email addresses of every single member of that website. Since most people use the same password on more than one website, it's usually trivial to break into email accounts, and from there gain access to personal financial information.

That's when you really need to worry.

Anonymous is not the real enemy. Sure, they often do things that embarrass public figures or CEOs, and the tactics can be financially damaging, but they aren't nearly as damaging as the professional criminals who use the information they gather for personal gains in the form of identity theft or wholesaling of accounts and passwords.

Identity Theft Prevention

An entire market has emerged over the past several years to help protect identites, including services such as LifeLock, Equifax ID Patrol, and others. These services can often monitor the criminal sharing networks and detect when personal data is being exchanged. They then notify their clients and the damages can be minimized.

Staying vigilant is the name of the game. Even if you're not the CEO of Bank of America, you should constantly watch your financial statements and notify your bank as soon as you detect suspicious activity. Since hacking has become such a profitable venture, occurrences of it will only increase in frequency. Never use the same password on more than one site, and stay alert to the dangers of identity theft.