I got their email asking these questions: -Do you ever connect to your account on the same devices as other users? -Do other users ever connect to their accounts on the same devices as you? -If the answer is yes to either of these, what is the purpose for the shared connections? Does one of you provide financial advice and guidance for the other? Don't know how to response. Could you please help me?
For security reasons, It is better to treat such emails as phishing scams and delete it immediately. Do not attempt to open it. The more authentic, genuine it looks, the more dangerous it is. IB has to take care of its own security. We have to take care of our own security.
Do not click on any links in the email. Do not share any financial info in a reply to the email. Call IB in the morning via the phone the number you already had on file prior to the email and then get verification from IB that it was them that sent you the email. wrbtrader
Seeing those questions it looks like that IB has detected two users using the same computer for trading. They want to know the relationship between those two users. Why? If a user is providing guidance to another then this user is classified as a "professional" and needs to pay a higher price for market data subscriptions.
I don't know because I don't know the situation you're in. Beware that if you decide to lie and IB finds out the consequences might be much more severe for you and/or the other person(s) involved.
According to the posts following your reply, your firm could be the victim of a phishing scam. Should look into it.
Check the message center under the portal, if a message was sent there, it is not phishing and more likely that AML/KYC due diligence that was triggered for a number of reasons. If so, I'd urge you to make the call which hopefully will be a routine confirmation.
You could also move accounts to other brokers. So only 1 account per broker. Or use for each account another PC. Go thru VPN and switch so that your IP address is each time different. A question: I have an account and pay for the datafeed (futures CME). My son has an account too and he pays for his datafeed too. What's the importance if we trade both accounts together on 1PC? We both pay what we should pay and don't make any money from trading each others account.
The AML/KYC thing is all kabuki theater. They put a bunch of mindless drones to work reading off scripts following "best practice" but processing no actual understanding of what money laundering is or any training on how to actually detect it, let alone authority to do anything about it. They just need to show they followed the best practices, not that they actually accomplished anything. My (now ex) bank, BofA, which had been with for 20 years, recently insisted I talk to them via the phone, no email, to verify my customer information hadn't changed. One of the important facts they needed to verify hadn't changed was....my date of birth. And yes, I verified that was indeed what they were asking for and the bot I was speaking with was at a complete loss to explain how that might have changed. All they could do is repeat over and over that they had to ask these questions for my safety.