Stock broker found to use screen scraping code

2009-07-02

IT organisations are looking to use Business Transaction Management (BTM) and one firm has used it to stop a screen scraping stock broker, according to Oren Elias writing for TechNewsWorld.

Mr Elias gave the example of an organisation making use of BTM when an independent stock broker had written his own code to screen scrape a major investment bank's application to collect market data so he could improve his trading of stock options.

This screen scraping activity was happening in short bursts when there was a decent opportunity for him in the market, Mr Elias reported.

Using BTM data, IT professionals at the bank were able to locate the stock broker, block the account and fix the application code so that it would not happen again, he revealed.

Sentor experts note that there has been a rise in scraping in recent years and this may be down to the fall in the economy leading people to steal content rather than creating original material for their sites.