Work in the sector and once the investigations / fines came out massive notifications went out across the board reminding everyone not to use unapproved comms.
Was this used for nefarious purposes - possibly - but more likely it was general communications between team members using a platform that is more comfortable to them than either 1st party tools or something approved like teams. 99.9% of this was likely reminders for meetings, attendance and coverage messages, a message to a team member who timezone shifted from you and may be off any you need an answer etc. I'd guess most people involved didn't even consider the record keeping because their day to day jobs don't involve actual trading info, and the "encryption" of those services likely made them feel a more comfortable than they should.
Not trying to excuse the behavior - yes the record keeping is important - but I think it's also important to realize this was likely largely innocent.
great - however you are one person, the large banks involved here have staff of a few hundred thousand each across several countries and with various backgrounds and norms, many who are also friends and have contact with each other outside of office hours.
I agree, one needs to keep work comms on approved software, I'm simply stating that while it's fun to be like "oohh big bad bank was hiding secret convos" it was more likely "janet i'm out today can you take the meeting with svp of <insert corp>"
Put another way context matters in terms of how the public should react to the news, not so much the result (fines) or the regulations / requirements.
Was this used for nefarious purposes - possibly - but more likely it was general communications between team members using a platform that is more comfortable to them than either 1st party tools or something approved like teams. 99.9% of this was likely reminders for meetings, attendance and coverage messages, a message to a team member who timezone shifted from you and may be off any you need an answer etc. I'd guess most people involved didn't even consider the record keeping because their day to day jobs don't involve actual trading info, and the "encryption" of those services likely made them feel a more comfortable than they should.
Not trying to excuse the behavior - yes the record keeping is important - but I think it's also important to realize this was likely largely innocent.