The use non-public information is what the article talks about - there are plenty of other non-public data sets that traders use to gain an advantage (e.g. usin

The use non-public information is what the article talks about - there are plenty of other non-public data sets that traders use to gain an advantage (e.g. using helicopters with infared sensors over oil fields). The difference in this case seems to be they broke customer confidentiality rules to obtain the data, so use of that data for profit is now illegal.