I work in the industry too and the things that people mislabel as "front running" is really aggravating. At worst, you could call it "order anticipating": using publicly available knowledge to figure out that if someone hit Exchange A and B, they're probably headed to Exchange C next. But they have no inside knowledge that the same party will in fact send an order to Exchange C next. They're taking a risk by anticipating that.
"Front running" as defined by the SEC has a more narrow definition. It basically means that you have a customer that has placed an order for XYZ and you aware of the order, but you placed your own order to be executed in front them, thus forcing them to buy it from you at a higher price than if their order was executed first. HFTs are not "front running" anybody.
"Front running" as defined by the SEC has a more narrow definition. It basically means that you have a customer that has placed an order for XYZ and you aware of the order, but you placed your own order to be executed in front them, thus forcing them to buy it from you at a higher price than if their order was executed first. HFTs are not "front running" anybody.