In late Oct. 2016, remember how the NYT reported that the FBI saw no link between Trump and Russia?

[TheBlackAdder]

37. Let's put it this way, if it were email updates to bank services (either up or down). . .

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Those are generally sent to the subscribers of individual bank services. Those email alerts are not sent to all bank customers. As an example: If Trump subscribed to Alfa's Foreign Exchange (FX) system, he'd be getting emails if there were unexpected outages or changes of service to the FX system. That would mean the connection was not an idle connection, but actually used to subscribe to their FX system. That would also mean there was a need for FX services and you pay $$$ for that on a monthly or yearly contract. Trump being cheap would not subscribe to things he's not using.

A bank is also not going to set up a connection with another entity without some form of contract and statement of use. Generally, Know Your Customer like practices exist in most countries, except for rogue and sanctioned ones. They should have performed a background check and had a plan in place. Adding a connection requires Alfa's Infrastructure Defense people to whitelist the IP addresses, the Networking Department has to allow the telco connection, if not through the Internet. Opening bank connections to the Internet introduces a whole bunch of Risk Management and Compliance issues, especially on bi-directional (no inbound only) messaging. There had to be a need to add Trump's server to the system.

I'm aware of a few brokerage houses and I don't recall any allowing private email servers to connect, just for sending emails.

That's why this whole thing sounds fugazi. The cost and resources to set this up, the risks, the messages having payloads. The NSA definitely has the data. The real question is why the cloud of confusion over what was being sent?

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