A quant researcher proposes scraping non-public employee badge data…

Question

A quant researcher proposes scraping non-public employee badge data from a partner building to predict store traffic. What should leadership do?

Accepted Answer

Escalate through ethics/legal/compliance review; reject sources that violate privacy, contracts, or reputational risk standards even if predictive. — Predictive ≠ permissible. Badge-scraping fantasies go to ethics/legal — Sharpe doesn’t wash privacy risk.

Answer

Approve immediately based on expected Sharpe alone.

Answer

Store the data in a public S3 bucket for transparency.

Answer

Mandate use firm-wide without review.

A quant researcher proposes scraping non-public employee badge data from a partner building to predict store traffic. What should leadership do?

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