
Wall Street's WhatsApp Secret: Illegal Texting Is Out of Control - walterbell
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/wall-street-s-whatsapp-secret-illegal-texting-is-out-of-control?cmpid=flipboard
======
bradleybuda
Bloomberg (the parent company of Bloomberg News), of course, sells very
expensive software to Wall Street that facilitates compliant / legal instant
messaging. This is barely disclaimed in the article, in a parenthetical that
does not note the obvious conflict of interest.

------
dewey
Other discussion with more comments already:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14001310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14001310)

------
sleepychu
Why is Wall Street (finance) susceptible to this in particular? Is it just
because they hold high value information?

I could share lots of strategically relevant data with people I know outside
my employer and if I used WhatsApp then I'd be less detectable than if I used
my work email account but so what? I fail to see why this particular
communication mechanism is worse than others.

~~~
quanticle
_Why is Wall Street (finance) susceptible to this in particular? Is it just
because they hold high value information?_

Part of it is the rampant principal/agent issues all over the financial
sector. Take, for example, the example in the article of the bond trader who
sent a client a photo of the firm's current positions, in an effort to gain
business. I very much doubt the firm wanted its confidential trading data
shared with outsiders. I very much doubt that it was in the public interest
for this one customer to have access to sensitive information that other
customers lacked. But from the perspective of the bond salesman, it was a
winning move, because it landed him a sale (and the accompanying commission).

~~~
mirimir
It also facilitates having a side business in anonymous tips.

