Financial Times: Instant messaging used in ‘untraceable’ City leaks
“follows a string of cases where e-mails have provided crucial evidence, such as when Royal Dutch/Shell disclosed e-mails showing the feud between two of its directors over its overstatement of reserves.”
By Bob Sherwood, Legal Correspondent
Published: August 20 2004
City professionals are increasingly using untraceable electronic instant messaging systems to communicate sensitive information secretly, computer experts have warned.
Many workers at financial institutions have woken up to the dangers of sending improper communications by e-mail after so many “smoking gun” messages have been exposed in recent years.
Instead, they are turning to Microsoft’s MSN Messenger and other real-time “instant messaging” systems to send information that their employers cannot detect, according to Kroll Ontrack, part of the global risk consultancy.
Adrian Palmer, managing director of Kroll Ontrack in the UK, said his teams had recently been asked to investigate several cases where instant messaging was believed to have been used to leak secret commercial information. He said: “The message about e-mail has got through to a number of people but the more savvy people have now got this instant messaging technology, which is completely untraceable and lots of commercial information could be flowing through it.”
He said his investigators were “fairly certain” traders were using the technology to strike deals outside the scope of their organisation’s normal controls, and that City figures were using it to tip off friends about merger and acquisition deals.
Though such messaging systems, which let users know when friends or colleagues are online and allow them to send messages directly to the recipient’s computer screen, have been available for some years, it has taken time for large numbers of people to adopt them. The messages are not stored on back-up tapes or the hard drives of the PCs used.
“We hear lots of stories from dinner parties where people boast that if they want to say something improper, they do it on Messenger,” Mr Palmer said.
The trend follows a string of cases where e-mails have provided crucial evidence, such as when Royal Dutch/Shell disclosed e-mails showing the feud between two of its directors over its overstatement of reserves.
The Financial Services Authority said there had been concerns about instant messaging for some months. However, the City watchdog said its existing rules covering conflicts of interest were sufficient to cover such new forms of communication. So specific rules were not necessary.
In the US, securities regulators cracked down on the use of instant messaging last year, when the National Association of Securities Dealers told its members they must save instant messages for three years or restrict employees in using the technology. Some companies are understood to have banned the use of such systems outright.
Kroll Ontrack has been asked by some organisations to enable them to track information being sent in instant messages.
Mr Palmer said it was reasonably easy to place a device on a computer server to divert the messages and search for information, but employers had to tell their workers they were doing it because of the likelihood of intercepting private information.
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
