Friday, September 7, 2001

France Telecom inadvertent disclosure blamed on "computer error" A variant on the risk of leaving information you don't want disclosed in 'comments' part of a MS Office document, except that instead of the consequences being just egg-on-face, there are selective disclosure issues and the potential for accusations of unfairness. In the US, class action lawsuits have been attempted for less. http://public.wsj.com/sn/y/SB999174259870751856.html http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010830/nyth052.html For the uninitiated, selective disclosure of material information is a mortal sin in the investment world. The underlying principle of financial markets is one of fairness to all shareholders -- stock in a company is not called "equity" for nothing. Executing trades based on information to which all shareholders do not have access is called insider trading, though mechanisms do exist that allow insiders to trade in a perfectly legitimate and legal fashion, and is a grave offense in most countries with developed financial markets. Of course, most large investors have more time, resources and expertise to devote to decision making than most small ones, so their advantage is undeniable. But the basis for making investment decisions, so-called material information, must be available to all investors, large and small. A widely discussed regulation, dubbed Reg FD (for Fair Disclosure) was adopted by the SEC in October of 2000: more information on that here: http://www.sec.gov/rules/final/33-7881.htm Back to the subject and the risk: the error is obviously human and the risks of email compounded with the notes/comments/change-tracking features have been discussed many times in Risks. Indeed the company I work for released a PR document with the revision history intact... I can happen to the best of us ! ["Peter Campbell" via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 65] 0:00 # G!

Web filter considered harmful Today, I had to call Palm Support Germany about some problems encountered with one of their new models (insert m500 into the USB cradle, and the PC will occasionally reboot). The call-center guy I had on the phone hadn't heard about the problem. However, I had done a web search before, and had found some mailing list discussions where someone reported that Palm's US second-tier support knew the problem quite well. So I gave the list archive's URL to the guy, asking that he investigates the problem. "Sorry, I can't access this through our web proxy. They want to be sure that we don't surf for private purposes during work hours." The RISK should be obvious: Filtering support employees' web access for security or whatever other reasons can seriously damage these employees' ability to do their job. Thomas Roessler http://log.does-not-exist.org/ [Thomas Roessler via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 65] 0:00 # G!