How tick scalping gets accounts flagged even when the terms are vague

[FXS London Scalper]

A friend had his account restricted last month. The broker's terms didn't mention scalping. They did have a clause about "abusive trading practices" and "exploiting price latency". That turned out to be enough.

His style: very short trades, many under 30 seconds, mostly around news, with a high win rate. From the broker's side, that pattern looks a lot like latency arbitrage, whether or not that's what he was doing.

What tends to trigger reviews, from what I've collected:

• A large share of trades held under one minute.
• Consistent profits concentrated in the seconds after price updates.
• Trading mostly at news or during thin liquidity.
• Use of tools that react faster than the broker's feed.

How to protect yourself:

1. Ask the broker in writing whether your style is allowed. Keep the answer.
2. Prefer brokers whose model doesn't depend on client losses, or that state explicitly that scalping is allowed.
3. Keep a minimum holding time if your strategy allows it.
4. Withdraw regularly. A large balance is a bigger target.

Vague terms usually favour the broker. Has anyone here had a restriction and got it reversed? What arguments worked?