Software spies to watch for rogue traders

Wall Street subway sign

Your employer is highly unlikely to be very impressed at finding there’s spyware on the computer you use for work … unless you work in investment banking or the stock market, that is. Because then they may have put it there themselves. [image by epicharmus]

Increasingly worried about the risk of rogue traders and insider deals causing all sorts of economic nastiness, banks and financial institutions are turning to sophisticated spying software to keep an eye on their employees. A number of other industries use similar precautions, too – we can expect our employee contracts to expand in sympathy as we become obliged to consent to being watched while we work.

As a side note, while it’s good to see the banks taking precautions and adopting the latest technological advances to make the economy more secure, I just don’t see how – in a business where $6 billion can be lost off the value of a company in less than an hour – it still takes five working days for a cheque to clear to my account. Is this what they mean by the “trickle-down economy”?

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