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> A related issue would be insider trading. To be honest, all of the data hoovers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Co. have a pretty obvious ins
by nota_bene 11y ago
> A related issue would be insider trading.
To be honest, all of the data hoovers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Co. have a pretty obvious insider knowledge-like cash machine: simply look into a few correlations between what data their users (as signed in users or as involuntary shadow profiles) put into these companies' databases and the movements of the stock market. Then predict and cash out.
- mwerd 11y agoThis is actually the case in at least one public example[1]. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia against Bonan Huang and Nan Huang, saying the analysts used the nonpublic data to trade in the shares of consumer retail companies ahead of sales and earnings reports. The lawsuit said from November 2013 to January 2015, the two analysts, who had access to the data as fraud investigators, made hundreds, if not thousands, of keyword searches for sales data on at least 170 publicly traded companies. The SEC said the two employees were able to analyze the data to determine if a company's sales were increasing or decreasing on a periodic basis. [1]http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/22/capital-one-fin-insidertrading-idUSL1N0V02ZY20150122 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/22/capital-one-fin-in...