https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/banking-finance/jpmorgan-staff-irked-over-order-to-save-texts-on-personal-phones
7 replies (most recent on top)
Its one thing to tell people to tell people to speak up.. JPM basically runs the gov't itself, baby face Jamie has so many politician's in his pocket its not even funny. They may have tip lines and other such nonsense, but when its brass tacks you versus the biggest bank in the world's lawyers, you're meatballs.
Think about it this way, this is a fake request for show and also a heads up. You can be 100% sure that if your using Signal or some other encrypted app with folks at other desks, yeah your deleting all traces of the activity before a dopey regulator comes asking. Its almost like the lawyers giving a heads up, regulators might ask, delete all traces asap.
"...and nobody will hire them" - complete lies. I'd love to share stories with you and really understand who you honestly know that hasn't been hired back full time. The person who "ended their own career" is also in charge of submitting those applications...sounds like they are lazy.
@1aqx+1blaibOH, correct. Many have ended their own careers by doing just that and nobody will hire them. It's a fine line between policy and reality, walk carefully.
Don’t listen to the guy below. HR stands on the side of higher ups only so you will only get retaliation if you do say something. Don’t forget that you’re here for the pay check only, not for being a hero. Remember that
@1lib+1blaibOH, if you see something, say something. You make it bad for everyone else when you stay silent.
If regulators only knew the half of what goes on here. I can think of about a dozen illegal items over the last decade in my area alone that would put someone in prison but luckily were never discovered by regulators. Lets face regulators are lazy and stupid, they wait till something shows up in the papers before making any effort. There's so many bed bugs here its ridiculous.
JPMorgan staff irked over order to save texts on personal phones
SAT, JUN 12, 2021 - 9:32 AM UPDATED SAT, JUN 12, 2021 - 9:38 AM
It's an open secret that many Wall Street denizens have been taking a certain forbidden liberty while working from home: Tapping text messages to colleagues and clients on smartphones untethered to workplace surveillance systems. Now some of them are panicking. PHOTO: REUTERS
[NEW YORK] It's an open secret that many Wall Street denizens have been taking a certain forbidden liberty while working from home: Tapping text messages to colleagues and clients on smartphones untethered to workplace surveillance systems. Now some of them are panicking.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. - often a standard-setter for the industry - is ordering traders, bankers, financial advisers and even some branch employees to sift through years of text messages on personal devices and set aside any related to work, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
One recent internal notice seen by Bloomberg directed recipients to not only root through their standard messages, but also platforms such as WeChat and WhatsApp, back to the start of 2018, and then save those related to work until the company's legal department tells them otherwise. It notes that failure to comply could lead to "consequences" for violating the company's code of conduct.
JPMorgan declined to comment.
From the moment the pandemic forced most Wall Streeters to start working outside the office walls in 2020, questions have swirled around how securities firms would meet strict US regulations to keep recordings of employee calls and written communications for years. The Securities and Exchange Commission's inspections unit even issued an industrywide alert, urging firms to consider enhancing procedures with so many employees off site.
A number of big banks sent equipment home with key personnel to monitor their work. Some firms have also invested heavily in enhancing surveillance systems. JPMorgan's recent step is another part of that broader push.
There have been myriad warnings for its workforce. Early last year, JPMorgan put a senior credit trader on leave as it reviewed whether he broke policies by using WhatsApp group chats with colleagues, Bloomberg reported at the time. The bank later fired him and cut bonuses for more than a dozen others. Looking back now, some JPMorgan employees privately acknowledge that the bank reminded them as the pandemic set in that they should refrain from using personal devices for business messages.
But if they did so anyway, they were in good company. Many on Wall Street quickly slipped into the habit of communicating on personal phones, either because of the convenience or the temptation to comment more candidly on private channels while outside the office. For some employees, texting became a substitute for the normal back-and-forth that would've occurred in-person at offices, especially when someone needed a quick way to reach colleagues about an urgent matter.
One bright side for those now worried: JPMorgan doesn't typically take the more cumbersome step of reading the messages unless there's a reason to, according to a person with knowledge of the process.