Ray Everett (born March 27, 1969), formerly known as Ray Everett-Church, is an American
attorney
Attorney may refer to:
* Lawyer
** Attorney at law, in some jurisdictions
* Attorney, one who has power of attorney
* ''The Attorney'', a 2013 South Korean film
See also
* Attorney general, the principal legal officer of (or advisor to) a gove ...
,
entrepreneur and
author. He was dubbed "the dean of corporate
Chief Privacy Officers" by ''Interactive Week Magazine,'' first creating that title and position in 1999 at
Internet advertising
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...
company
AllAdvantage AllAdvantage was an Internet advertising company that positioned itself as the world’s first "infomediary" by paying its users/members a portion of the advertising revenue generated by their online viewing habits. It became most well known for its ...
. In 1997, he was profiled by ''
The New York Times'' as an influential advocate of responsible online advertising. In 2013 and 2014
Business Insider designated him among the “Most Important
LGBT People in Tech.”
[
]
Biography
Everett combined computers, writing and security at an early age. He purchased his first computer, a
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...
, and a 300-baud modem at age 14. A year later, he published his first article, writing for the ''Westview'' (a Nashville area community newspaper) and detailing his experiences as a youthful
cracker
Cracker, crackers or The Crackers may refer to:
Animals
* ''Hamadryas'' (butterfly), or crackers, a genus of brush-footed butterflies
* '' Sparodon'', a monotypic genus whose species is sometimes known as "Cracker"
Arts and entertainment Films ...
of various early online services and
WATS WATS may refer to:
* Warrick Area Transit System, a transit agency serving Warrick County, Indiana
* Wide Area Telephone Service, a phone service for U.S. telecommunications
* Wide Area Tracking System, a system for detecting ground-based nuclear we ...
systems.
He worked for the American Immigration Lawyers Association in
Washington, DC, where he first became involved with the issue of
spam
Spam may refer to:
* Spam (food), a canned pork meat product
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...
as a result of the notorious "
Green Card Lottery" spams sent by immigration lawyers
Canter & Siegel
Laurence A. Canter (born June 24, 1953) and Martha S. Siegel (April 9, 1948 – September 24, 2000) were partners in a husband-and-wife firm of lawyers who posted the first massive commercial Usenet spam on April 12, 1994. This event came shortl ...
. That involvement was featured in a ''
Wired Magazine'' article in 1999. He continued to work on the emerging issues of spam and Internet privacy as independent consultant, where his work included developing anti-spam policies and enforcement practices for
America Online
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
, and as an Associate at the telecommunications law firm of Haley Bader & Potts PLLC in
Ballston,
Virginia.
In 1999 he went to work for Internet infomediary
AllAdvantage AllAdvantage was an Internet advertising company that positioned itself as the world’s first "infomediary" by paying its users/members a portion of the advertising revenue generated by their online viewing habits. It became most well known for its ...
where he, along with
AllAdvantage AllAdvantage was an Internet advertising company that positioned itself as the world’s first "infomediary" by paying its users/members a portion of the advertising revenue generated by their online viewing habits. It became most well known for its ...
CEO
Jim Jorgensen
Jim Jorgensen (born 1948 in Racine, Wisconsin) is a serial entrepreneur. He has started over 25 enterprises since getting his MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business at the age of 24. Jorgensen's industry selection for these new enterprises h ...
, conceived of the corporate
Chief Privacy Officer position and helped define the privacy standards for the world's first implementation of a mass market
infomediary
An infomediary works as a personal agent on behalf of consumers to help them take control over information gathered about them for use by marketers and advertisers. The concept of the infomediary was first suggested by former McKinsey consultant J ...
. He was also the Vice President for Public Policy at
AllAdvantage AllAdvantage was an Internet advertising company that positioned itself as the world’s first "infomediary" by paying its users/members a portion of the advertising revenue generated by their online viewing habits. It became most well known for its ...
, where he managed lobbying and government relations, including the first piece of anti-spam legislation ever passed by the
United States House of Representatives. In April 2000, Everett orchestrated a visit from then-President
Bill Clinton as the keynote speaker at a $1.1 Million fundraising event celebrating
AllAdvantage AllAdvantage was an Internet advertising company that positioned itself as the world’s first "infomediary" by paying its users/members a portion of the advertising revenue generated by their online viewing habits. It became most well known for its ...
's first anniversary.
From 2001 to 2004, he served as
Chief Privacy Officer and Vice President for Consulting for Philadelphia-based
ePrivacy Group, a privacy consulting and anti-spam technology firm. While there, he was part of the executive team that built anti-spam technology company
TurnTide Inc., which was sold to
Symantec Corporation
Gen Digital Inc. (formerly Symantec Corporation and NortonLifeLock) is a multinational software company co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and Prague, Czech Republic. The company provides cybersecurity software and services. Gen is a Fortune 50 ...
in 2004 for $28 million.
After privacy roles at Habeas, Responsys,
Keynote Systems, and
Yahoo,
in 2014 he became Director of Product Management and Principal Consultant at
TrustArc (formerly TRUSTe)
where his group designed software for automating privacy risk management and built the company's first consulting practice. In 2019, he joined the financial technology company
Blackhawk Network Holdings as
Chief Privacy Officer and in 2022 joined biotech startup Avellino Lab USA.
While he has spent considerable time working with Internet start-up ventures in Silicon Valley, his consulting clients have included many large global organizations such as
Pharmacia,
Pfizer,
Kimberly-Clark
Kimberly-Clark Corporation is an American multinational personal care corporation that produces mostly paper-based consumer products. The company manufactures sanitary paper products and surgical & medical instruments. Kimberly-Clark brand n ...
,
Intuit,
Aventis,
Household/HSBC,
Microsoft, the
National Association of Home Builders,
Ericsson,
Comcast
Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...
,
Pandora Radio,
Kia Motors,
ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...
,
Fujifilm,
Kellogg's
The Kellogg Company, doing business as Kellogg's, is an American multinational food manufacturing company headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States. Kellogg's produces cereal and convenience foods, including crackers and toaste ...
,
Mattel,
Mondelez
Mondelez International, Inc. ( ), often styled Mondelēz, is an American multinational confectionery, food, holding and beverage and snack food company based in Chicago. Mondelez has an annual revenue of about $26 billion and operates in ...
,
Thermo Fisher Scientific,
Toyota, and
Yum! Brands. In 1997, he was a co-founder of the anti-spam
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email. In 2002, he was a founding board member of the Privacy Officers Association (now called the
International Association of Privacy Professionals
The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) is a nonprofit, non-advocacy membership association founded in 2000. It provides a forum for privacy professionals to share best practices, track trends, advance privacy management iss ...
).
Publications
Everett co-authored ''Internet Privacy for Dummies'' (2002) and ''Fighting Spam for Dummies'' (2004), both part of the popular "...
For Dummies
''For Dummies'' is an extensive series of instructional reference books which are intended to present non-intimidating guides for readers new to the various topics covered. The series has been a worldwide success with editions in numerous lang ...
" book series published by
John Wiley & Sons. He has also written chapters on privacy and other Internet-related legal issues for ''The Internet Encyclopedia'' (2003) and ''The Handbook of Information Security'' (2006). He co-authored the Trusted Email Open Standard, a technical framework for increasing security and trust leveraging existing email technologies and protocols. From 2004 to 2009, he was a columnist for eSecurityPlanet.com and Datamation.com (Jupiter Media) and wrote more than fifty columns on privacy, security, spam.
Education
Everett holds a B.A. in International Studies from
George Mason University
George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...
(where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper
''Broadside'') and a
Juris Doctor
The Juris Doctor (J.D. or JD), also known as Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D., JD, D.Jur., or DJur), is a graduate-entry professional degree in law
and one of several Doctor of Law degrees. The J.D. is the standard degree obtained to practice law ...
from
The George Washington University Law School. While in law school, he studied under Professor
Jonathan Turley, where he was on a litigation team challenging
Black Bag Operations authorized under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign po ...
(FISA) in
espionage cases against former CIA agent
Harold J. Nicholson
Harold James Nicholson (born November 17, 1950) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who was twice convicted of spying for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
Nicholson's recruitment to the SVR appears to have occurre ...
and former FBI agent
Earl Edwin Pitts
:''This article describes Earl Pitts, the American spy. For the radio character, see Earl Pitts (radio character).''
Earl Edwin Pitts (born September 23, 1953) is a former FBI special agent who was convicted of espionage for selling information ...
.
Notable activities
*Principal at PrivacyClue LLC, a privacy consultancy based in the
San Francisco area
*Columnist for JupiterMedia's Datamation.com and eSecurityPlanet.com
*Weekly segment on The
David Lawrence Show on
satellite radio
Satellite radio is defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)'s ITU Radio Regulations (RR) as a ''broadcasting-satellite service''. The satellite's signals are broadcast nationwide, across a much wider geographical area than ter ...
*Co-founder and former counsel to the
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE)
*Member of the National Advisory Council for the
(SEAS)
*Founding Board Member Network Time Foundation
References
External links
Ray Everett's Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Everett, Ray
1969 births
Living people
American lawyers
American computer businesspeople
American gay writers
George Washington University Law School alumni
George Mason University alumni