Irked Goldman Sachs brass recently confronted Bloomberg LP over concerns reporters at the business news service have been using the company’s ubiquitous terminals to keep tabs on some employees of the Wall Street bank, The Post has learned.
The ability to spy on Bloomberg terminal users came to light recently when Goldman officials learned that at least one reporter at the news service had access to a wide array of information about customer usage, sources said.
In one instance, a Bloomberg reporter asked a Goldman executive if a partner at the bank had recently left the firm — noting casually that he hadn’t logged into his Bloomberg terminal in some time, sources added.
Goldman later learned that Bloomberg staffers could determine not only which of its employees had logged into Bloomberg’s proprietary terminals but also how many times they had used particular functions, insiders said.
The matter raised serious concerns for the firm about how secure information exchanged through the terminals within the firm actually was — and if the privacy of their business strategy had been compromised.
“You can basically see how many times someone has looked up news stories or if they used their messaging functions,” said one Goldman insider.
“It made us think, ‘Well, what else does [Bloomberg] have access to?’ ”
Bloomberg’s terminals have become the lifeblood of Wall Street trading shops, particularly those that mine the terminals’ reams of data to help make daily trading decisions.
Wall Street firms pay about $20,000 a year to rent each terminal — allowing the company founded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to ring up annual revenue of more than $6 billion.
The little man wants to control everything, doesn't he?
Shame he won't use that information to hold the criminals at Goldman accountable.
No comments:
Post a Comment