Calvin Pappas puts school on hold, focuses on privacy startup SelectOut

In honor of Data Privacy Day today, Calvin Pappas launched a new look for his online privacy management site, SelectOut. He also added features aimed at helping individuals protect their online privacy and companies shore up their privacy practices. “Give or take, well over half of companies on the web don’t have any privacy policy,”…

SelectOut founder Calvin Pappas poses at the Silicon Prairie Awards in August.

In honor of Data Privacy Day today, Calvin Pappas launched a new look for his online privacy management site, SelectOut. He also added features aimed at helping individuals protect their online privacy and companies shore up their privacy practices.

“Give or take, well over half of companies on the web don’t have any privacy policy,” SelectOut founder Pappas said, noting that many of those companies are collecting information or tracking visitors.

Pappas, a 21-year-old entrepreneur in Lincoln, Neb., started SelectOut two years ago with a mission to “improve online privacy.” He provided visitors to selectout.com a simple “opt-out engine” – with the click of a button, SelectOut would show a list of companies tracking the user online and give the user the ability to opt-out of that tracking.

To date, SelectOut has facilitated more than 37 million opt-outs (right) and signed-up around 10,000 users to its newsletter, Pappas said. Along the way, it’s earned notable press attention, including the The Kim Komando Show, which gave it the No. 1 spot on its “Top 10 Cool Sites of 2011” list. It’s also been referenced in a book, “The Intention Economy,” by Harvard fellow Doc Searls.

“When I first started this, people thought: Privacy? You can’t make a business out of that,” Pappas said. “I kind of learned that it could be a business when I had lawyers contact me,” wanting access to the data. “Maybe I’m completely wrong with this, but I’m giving it a shot.”

After starting SelectOut in September 2010 as a sophomore computer engineering major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Pappas balanced the site – at that time, he called it a side project – with his studies. But in May 2012, Pappas decided to suspend his studies and focus on his startup full-time. Now his days are filled coding and engineering, monitoring new laws, policy proposals and news that touches on privacy issues, and networking with others interested in online privacy. He said he’s self-funded the endeavour so far, and that his work has led to consulting gigs on privacy issues, as well.

Pappas’ long-term vision for SelectOut is “to create a place where privacy is defined individually,” so that every internet user has the ability to protect himself and can choose what information to share with whom.

In the coming weeks, SelectOut will release an API so that anyone can what investigate in more detail websites’ privacy settings, including trackers, scripts, data and policies. New business accounts will also be added with an aim to allow users to do a thorough scan of their site, create a privacy policy with the scanned data and with just a few additional questions, automatically update that privacy policy whenever their practices change.

“I want to help startups to create a way not only to have a better privacy policy, and have a privacy policy, but not to have to think about privacy,” Pappas said.

SelectOut business users will receive a seal of trust – “SelectOut Verified” – to show their own customers. Later this year, SelectOut plans to expand its services to include mobile apps, as well.

Depending on how things go, sometime this summer, Pappas said he will decide whether SelectOut will continue to be a full-time venture. The worst case scenario, he said, “I lose two years of work when I was 20.” At which point, he said he would find a job or finish his degree.

More on Pappas:Thriving privacy site SelectOut.org puts 19-year-old in high demand

 

Credits: Calvin Pappas photo by Malone & Co. / Silicon Prairie Awards. Screenshots from selectout.org.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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