Reddit Is Letting Power Users In on Its IPO. Not Everyone’s Buying::Reddit says it wants to reward users by letting them buy into the company’s public listing. Some say it’s too risky—others say they won’t pay a company they’ve already given hours of free labor to.
This is really nothing special in the world of IPOs, companies offer their initial shares to specific parties before the public is able to puchase them. These are typically investors, employees, etc.
It would be a pretty big problem if it was found that the financial company administering the IPO was to share personally identifiable information to Reddit. SEC rules actually have teeth, so I wouldn’t be too worried about them lying about it. It does look like you have to provide them a name to register so sure they might have that associated with your account if they don’t already, but it does help prevent selling the opportunity to buy.
It isn’t helpful to spread FUD here when you are discussing something like the offering of securities products which have very defined procedures that the offering party must follow. This is one area you don’t want to fuck around and find out about.