I am absolutely positive you misinterpreted the "based on research". What they mean is their staff checking LinkedIn profiles and the like, just as in my case. Where did you get this interpretation from? You post the exact wording of message from your broker but then you make some crazy hoop into imaginary conspiracy land....
Interactive Brokers just notified me that they changed my status back to "Non-Professional". Glad that this issue got resolved. I even got a phone call to inform me of this change which I appreciate and wanted to share. The official letter stating the usage of market data and making sure my LinkedIn profile does not contradict my IB profile information helped in bringing this change about. In my case it was an outdated LinkedIn profile that caused this issue. I rarely use social media or maintain public profiles, LinkedIn possibly being the only one. I may close my LinkedIn account because I am at a stage in my career where I do not need it anymore. Though have not decided yet whether to shut it down or keep it.
I was curious and asked around with some of my contacts and was shocked by what I heard. The NYSE is going through social media to find people whom they think should be classified as professional and then hitting up the brokers to back pay for not doing their due diligence. I'm pretty sure they can search via email address on LinkedIn and thus probably run bots or queries looking for matches and then looking for what someone posts as their job. If you're a broker and you are being strong armed into paying months or years of back data because someone signs a documents stating they were not a professional and social media says otherwise, the brokers are then forced to write their own bots and queries to avoid eating the costs. Don't know about you but I for one am changing my email on LinkedIn to a burner under the premise, if NYSE is doing this, who else is and why.
lol.. yeah ib fixed everything with a skeleton crew staff due to usa mkts being closed. never believe what u read unless its backed up. where is a copy of the email or letter. a phone call...right. ib will always email Your account. ib is a very solid outfit especially if you want easy access globally.
I'm currently in the midst of a bad customer-service experience with IB. It sucks. But as bad as customer service interactions with IB can be, it's still the best broker for me in terms of commissions and technology platform.... So I put up with it.
Well there are pros and cons to that issue. Let's not forget that the transgressors here are users who misrepresent their true status in order to save money. That is wrong and unethical at best. Possibly illegal. Let's be thankful that there are pros otherwise retail would pay a lot more in data fees. Anyone who classifies as pro but misrepresents himself is in the wrong imho.
I am registered under the IB HK entity, a segregated entity, and the issue was settled in HK and I got phone calls even from their back office in India. Believe whatever you want. Idiot. But just so you can rest in peace I will post a screen shot of the adjusted non pro status below: