http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/02/27/former-rapleaf-intern-launches-privacy-startup/

February 27, 2011

Former RapLeaf Intern Launches Privacy Startup

By Emily Steel

After an internship at online data firm RapLeaf Inc. last summer, Calvin Pappas returned to the University of Nebraska and decided to start a company to educate consumers about Internet privacy issues and give them an easy way to opt out of online tracking.

RapLeaf was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article last year that investigated the San Francisco firm's role in gathering and selling personal details about individuals to marketers and political campaigns.

The article, part of the paper's year-long What They Know investigation into online privacy, reported how the company takes a step beyond traditional online trackers by collecting real names and email addresses of Internet users to build detailed dossiers on them.

Mr. Pappas, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in business and computer engineering, said that he learned about the "massive scale" of companies that track consumers online during his internship. Despite industry efforts to educate consumers about the tracking and give them a chance to opt out, he didn't think that most consumers are aware or know how to protect themselves from being monitored, he says.

So he decided to start a website, www.selectout.org, to educate consumers about online privacy issues and give them a one-stop-shop where they could opt out of the tracking. Launched in September, the service now lets consumers opt out of tracking from more than 100 companies. (In contrast, The Internet ad industry's site, abouads.info, allows consumers to opt out of tracking from 61 companies.)

"The idea came from the concept of giving choice to people," he says.

Mr. Pappas said his project doesn't have any venture backing and that he only has had initial discussions with some investors in Nebraska. For now, it's a side project to keep him busy while not in class, he says, noting that he hopes it will evolve into a full fledged company as the broader market for online privacy services takes off.

"People are always going to have privacy concerns online," he says. "As more and more of their lives are lived online it becomes a bigger and bigger market."