This is a broad / vague statement. In all things your depth in defense should always be proportional to the value it's protecting. Any other attitude is mindbogglingly foolish and you are, or at least whatever you have, is a ripe target for the next predator to come along. So if you have some weak edge algorithm which took little R&D or is common knowledge, sure, protecting it with much more than a u/p is over kill. But if you have something with a smooth equity curve and significant ROI that isn't discussed anywhere you've seen, than I'd say adding a few similar fake trades now and then and opposites on a separate account is worthwhile to make the PNL look poor. What's more, I would recommend having a trusted group of fellow traders who are reporting and tracking potential front running / reverse engineering abuses. I have about 20 or so on discord I have developed relationships with and trust not to be shills for/against brokers.
Physically stealing leaves in general many traces that can proof it happened. There is also proof that something physically disappeared. Electronically stealing leaves in general very few traces it happened. Nothing disappears, it is just copied. Governments, banks and multinationals all over the world who have specialized services to protect them are unable to avoid electronically stealing, so that proofs it happens and also that it is very difficult to proof it. European email servers from important were hacked for years before somebody found out. Hillary Clinton's emails were copied/stolen by Russia. The NSA steals data on a massive and daily scale...
I've had similar experiences ( sort of), I made a fair bit trading binaries a while back , next thing I had a shady character wanting to use my trading record to sell "advice" , I never gave my permission for anyone to see my trading record etc , he admitted he knew someone at the firm involved and they had given him my trading record and telephone number to boot.
??? No proof he caused the crash and wasn't convicted of that either. The only thing they reversed engineer was his spoofing and it took an entire investigation team and using specific software from the CME itself to deconstruct his trades.
very hard to reverse engineer a strat. first you gotta find the right indicator(s) (unless it is from the most popular ones, but i doubt it) and then the parameters from it. and if you use more than two or three indis, then it becomes almost impossible. also if brokers steal strategies, they have stolen much better than your "holy grail"
If you have a bad edge, you might think the markets changed. While in reality you had no edge and the markets didn't change. You had something that accidentally worked a short time.
%% A more likely scenario is some on else discovers the pattern or simply/ markets change...…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...