Interactive Brokers has NO respect for your privacy!

Def,

With all due respect, I already contacted a representative and I did convey my concerns to management via the suggestion e-mail.

Of course I didn't expect the customer representative to place me on hold while he rewrote your company policy.

However, the people I spoke with made it seem like I was complaining about something totally unimportant.

I'm not worried so much that anyone is going to defraud my account. Rather, I'm just opposed to the entire world being able to see what my account balance is, as well as the exact trades that I'm doing.

I feel that IB could easily remedy the problem by allowing those who choose to opt-out of getting these e-mail statements.

I felt that by posting my concerns on this site, I would get peoples' attention to this problem and maybe IB would take it more seriously.

Technology is a great thing, but unfortunately, each day it seems we have less and less privacy because of it. I don't see why we shouldn't at least try to preserve what little we have left.

And I never made any "inaccurate blanket statements".

By the way Def, what's your yearly salary at IB? ; )
 
I agree with mgregor. IB needs to do something different. At very least take our names and account number off of the statements! That shouldn't be too difficult. Don't be too hard on Def either mgregor. If he can get something done that we can't then more power to him. It's nice having someone that close to management that can voice our opinions.
 
mgregeor,
i believe your thread title is wrong stating that the firm has no respect for privacy. Maybe that is how you feel but it is not the case. E-mails are not that easy to pick off and therefore your information is not sent to the entire world. I agree with your concerns on privacy and mean it when I will make sure this topic is discussed at the highest levels.

As for my salary, i just e-mailed it to myself. After seeing it do you think I'm reasonably paid? :)

Huby,
Thanks for you comments. As for removing the names, etc. This information is required by certain regulators to make the confirmations/statements valid.

Overall, privacy is an issue regulators and brokers are constantly battling over. I'll do my best to make sure the issue is discussed.
 
FWIW, I really like to have the statements e-mailed to me so that I have control over and possession of the data, and in fact I need them in e-mail form to feed into my records system (since it is easier to process plain ASCII than HTML from the web site).

I agree that the option to not receive account info might be nice from a privacy perspective, but there are probably regulatory hurdles to implementing this (I believe brokers are supposed to keep people updated with info on their transactions and account status).
 
It is annoying to read nasty comments about IB.
Yes, I wondered about the email policy. And then decided I liked it. Yes, it would be nice to be able to disable it and/or charge users to receive by mail [or free for the monthly statement or something].

But coming on like this and just smash IB on EliteTrader is not fair. Maybe it was done just because IB, thanks to Def, is almost the only broker who responds and check EVERYDAY this forum to help us traders.

I am not affiliated with them. I am just happy customer and there are many of us. I can understand you were surprised mgregor and maybe angry. OK. Still the method is not fair. But I don't care.

What I care about Def :
- keep the commissions that low, even lower if you can [now 0.5 cent above 500 shares!].
- keep coming on this forum to listen and help when you can.
- keep improving the system.

vpiNeo
 
1. as already mentioned, i'm not with ib, but i still think that ib has done a great job bringing commissions down in the industry.

2. that's not to say they, or anybody else, should have general immunity from criticism where it is due...

particularly as they are not the only broker sending out detailed financial infos over the web with full contact details - so don't read my post as an ib criticism, but rather as a criticism of an industry practise that is extremely careless.

3. an email that is sent is stored on dozens of hub servers on its route for as long as those servers exist...

4. get a hacker tracker etc software and check how many automated attacks your IT system gets per day, it is absolutely incredible... most of these people are not skilled hackers, they simply use existing software from real hackers who are more than happy to let others share in the fun...

5. anybody who is interested in following email filtered for certain catch words such as *account* etc can easily do so, just check out some of the hacker sites/newsgroups etc, it really is pretty easy...

6. for those who don't mind, fine, for others who do, there is pretty simple email encryption software available, eg PGP etc, no hassle, both sides need to install it once and thats that, really should not pose a major problem.
 
vvv,
You are absolutely correct. No one should be immune from criticism. However, how it's presented is another matter. Creating a thread with what can be viewed as an insulting title doesn't serve any purpose - especially when someone like myself is clearly making an effort to respond to questions. I am doing my best attempting to improve the IB system. This topic in particular is most valid but it wouldn't have dragged on for so long if it was written in a more constructive tone.
 
def, i have to say that from what i've seen here you really do a great job of taking care of your customers agendas etc.

cheers
 
I agree that it's coming on a bit too strong to post such a header. It seems that everyone who doesn't get their immediate way with IB starts screaming "foul".

I know I'm getting tired of reading all this nitpicking. If you don't like fast executions and the CHEAPEST commissions in the business, then go back to Datek with $10 tickets and two minute fills.

IB is a no frills service. You can't get all the bells & whistles for less than a penny a share with size. At least not at this particular time.

C'mon dudes...get with the program.

 
Def,

Just another suggestion for IB. Right now I use TradeLog to keep sufficient records for my trading with IB. I export the email into a text file and TradeLog parses it. What I would really like is to have the Email provided in a well-define XML format based on a simple XML Schema. David at Armen computing is constantly fighting with the changes in the email format. I've been using IB for one month and we've hade to upgrade TradeLog three times already.

You can keep the email as text if you want, but how about providing an XML format on the site where you log in to look at your daily statements. Users could then download the XML stream for easy parsing and input to various record keeping programs.

Thanks
 
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