From fork-admin@xent.com Wed Sep 4 11:41:40 2002 Return-Path: Delivered-To: yyyy@localhost.example.com Received: from localhost (jalapeno [127.0.0.1]) by jmason.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D9B4916F7A for ; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 11:40:00 +0100 (IST) Received: from jalapeno [127.0.0.1] by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-5.9.0) for jm@localhost (single-drop); Wed, 04 Sep 2002 11:40:00 +0100 (IST) Received: from xent.com ([64.161.22.236]) by dogma.slashnull.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g83LawZ04243 for ; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 22:36:58 +0100 Received: from lair.xent.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by xent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0104294108; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:34:02 -0700 (PDT) Delivered-To: fork@example.com Received: from alumnus.caltech.edu (alumnus.caltech.edu [131.215.49.51]) by xent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D675F294099; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:33:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by alumnus.caltech.edu (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g83LZnfw010916; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:35:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: InfoWorld profile of Max Levchin Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed MIME-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v482) From: Rohit Khare To: fork@example.com Message-Id: <1C5D938E-BF85-11D6-8989-000393A46DEA@alumni.caltech.edu> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.482) Sender: fork-admin@xent.com Errors-To: fork-admin@xent.com X-Beenthere: fork@example.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:35:48 -0700 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by dogma.slashnull.org id g83LawZ04243 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.7 required=7.0 tests=ACCEPT_CREDIT_CARDS,AWL,KNOWN_MAILING_LIST, QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT,SPAM_PHRASE_01_02,USER_AGENT_APPLEMAIL version=2.41-cvs X-Spam-Level: Congrats, in the end... > "If they didn't have Max, they might have succumbed, because PayPal was > susceptible to fraud and money laundering, and Max tightened them up," http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ct/xml/02/09/02/020902ctspotlight.xml Secure and at ease By Jack Mccarthy August 30, 2002 1:01 pm PT MAX LEVCHIN'S FASCINATION with encryption started when he was a teenager in Kiev, Ukraine, and continued as he immigrated to the United States where he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In late 1998, not two years out of college, he drew on his passion to co-found PayPal, the online payment system that has since attracted tens of millions of users and gained the reputation as the premier Internet transaction processor. Now online auction house eBay has acquired his company for a king's ransom. Not bad for a 27-year-old kid from Ukraine. A programmer since he was 10 years old, Levchin and his family moved to Chicago in 1991, and since then he has pursued security as if on a mission. He created a startup right out of college to build secure passwords for Palm Pilots. He met Peter Thiel, and the two founded PayPal to target online payment security. Thiel is now CEO of the company. "This company was founded on the notion of security value," Levchin says. "Peter Thiel and I shared that vision from the very beginning." Thiel concentrates on company business matters, whereas Levchin remains focused on security, which he says is the key to the company's good fortune. "I explain [PayPal] as a security company posing as a transaction processor," Levchin says. "We spend a lot of time designing security so it doesn't step on the toes of convenience and not the other way around. The trade-off is fundamental." Mountain View, Calif.-based PayPal allows businesses and consumers with e-mail addresses to send and receive payments via the Internet, accepting credit card or bank account payments for purchases. The service extends to 38 countries, with more than 17 million users and more than 3 million business accounts. Most of PayPal's users are participants in online auctions, which led PayPal to be closely linked with eBay, the leading Web auction site. Although they were once rivals, the relationship between the two companies resulted July 8 in eBay's tentative $1.5 billion acquisition of PayPal. The agreement is subject to regulatory review. Levchin says he will stay at PayPal as it merges with eBay. "There are areas of synergy and collaboration we can explore." Although security is a dominant feature for PayPal, the company's ability to carry out open communications among the millions of participants fits the growing Web services model, Levchin says. "This is a service that links people and allows them to send messages to one another," he says. Levchin is a panelist at InfoWorld's Next-Generation Web Services II conference Sept. 20 PayPal, as an online payment system, is a natural target for fraud. And Levchin has almost singlehandedly saved the company from thieves bent on exploiting the system, says Avivah Litan, a vice president and analyst covering financial services at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner. "If they didn't have Max, they might have succumbed, because PayPal was susceptible to fraud and money laundering, and Max tightened them up," Litan says. To combat criminals, Levchin established "Igor," an antifraud program that monitors transactions and warns of suspicious accounts. Levchin says building security and antifraud systems is a job he relishes. "The work I do is important to PayPal and to consumers in general because the work makes Internet shopping safe. It's the view that ecommerce has arrived."