http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/terminally_nosy_p5pSzsDkZzWJ2H7SqpFAPO?utm_source=SFnewyorkpost&utm_medium=SFnewyorkpost
Goldman Sachs employees concerned Bloomberg news reporters are using terminals to snoop
- Last Updated: 11:23 AM, May 10, 2013
- Posted: 12:20 AM, May 10, 2013
EXCLUSIVE
Talk about a nanny state.
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.
Mayor Bloomberg, who is worth about $25 billion, no longer oversees the day-to-day running of Bloomberg LP but controls the privately held company.
In recent weeks, top executives from Goldman have met face to face with Bloomberg brass over the potentially explosive issue.
Some Goldman traders are still skittish about how much of their terminal usage can be gleaned from Bloomberg terminals — despite assurances from the news and data service that within 24 hours of being alerted by Goldman it had pulled the plug on the function that allowed its reporters to snoop.
A Goldman spokesman confirmed that Bloomberg was addressing the issue.
Bloomberg journalists are prohibited from discussing non-public Bloomberg documents and proprietary information about the company and its clients in their reporting.
No reporters have lost their jobs as a result of the snooping issues.
“In light of [Goldman’s] concern as well as a general heightened sensitivity to data access, we decided to disable journalist access to this customer relationship information for all clients,” Bloomberg spokesman Ty Trippet said.
The data trolling issue is somewhat ironic for the bank given that some on the Street often accuse Goldman of tapping key information better than rivals.
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