US regulators have accused a man of making $1.8m (£1.4m) by trading on confidential information he overheard while his wife was on a remote call, in a case that could fuel arguments against working from home.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it charged Tyler Loudon with insider trading after he “took advantage of his remote working conditions” and profited from private information related to the oil firm BP’s plans to buy an Ohio-based travel centre and truck-stop business last year.
The SEC claims that Loudon, who is based in Houston, Texas, listened in on several remote calls held by his wife, a BP merger and acquisitions manager who had been working on the planned deal in a home office 20ft (6 metres) away.
The regulator said Loudon went on a buying spree, purchasing more than 46,000 shares in the takeover target, TravelCentres, without his wife’s knowledge, weeks before the deal was announced on 16 February 2023. TravelCentres of America’s stock soared by nearly 71% after the deal was announced. Loudon then sold off all of his shares, making a $1.8m profit.
You need an example of big tech companies collecting personal information and exploiting it for profit?
No, for stock trading, as this guy did.
Why would you need that?
Yeah, but Google, Facebook, and other megacorps profit from doing the same kind of thing and that seems to be fine.
Oh I see. You’re getting stuck on semantics. You see, when I used “same kind of” in my sentence, that was to specify that it is not the same exact thing. My concern lies in the fact that personal data is taken and exploited for personal profit, the details of how the data is exploited is less important to me than the fact that it is allowed to be collected and exploited in the first place. Actually, since you bring it up, I wonder if a megacorp with bots collecting data from consumers all across the web might have the resources to predict and possibly manipulate the stock market themselves? Hmm…
That’s what I asked example of.
Making money on personal information while might be immoral, but legal (as far as what Google does), this guy did something different and illegal. I honestly do not see similarities.