In terms of one of those applications that largely falls beneath the radar, I wanted to recommend a simple one called “Paper Karma”, available for the iPhone, Android and the iPad if you’re willing to look at the iPhone sized app on the iPad.
The concept of the product is extremely simple; take a photo of the address label of junk mail that you wish you didn’t get anymore (think catalogs, flyers, coupons, mailers, credit card offers, etc) and the Paper Karma team will do the rest, which basically means contacting the companies on your behalf and getting you removed from their mailing list.
Paper Karma was recently acquired by Reputation.com, an online privacy and security company with the understanding that the two would help each other to build stronger algorithms and data management against online spam and privacy concerns. The application works as advertised, with fairly rapid results and a nice outcome of quickly removing mail you don’t want.
This is the second acquisition this year for Reputation.com, which in January acquired UK-based rival Reputation 24/7 to help expand internationally. As with the PaperKarma deal, financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but will involve “millions” in extra investment.
Both deals are a sign of the company’s ramped-up ambitions in the wake of raising nearly $68 million in funding, including a $41 million round nearly two years ago, in July 2011, led by August Capital, with participation also from Insight Capital and previous investors Jafco Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Bessemer Venture Partners. PaperKarma had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from SV Angel.
