York Suburban teen takes cybersecurity to heart

A high school student with a cell phone can get into a lot of trouble.

A hastily sent Facebook post or Twitter message can last forever and come back to bite someone when they're applying for college or a job. Then there are the prying eyes of parents who can see what their children post online.

As a high school student, privacy is something Nick Pitoniak takes seriously.

Pitoniak, a senior at York Suburban High School who lives in Spring Garden Township, developed a cell phone app called Mutter Mail, which he says lets users send messages back and forth without leaving any trace. The messages disappear within 30 seconds, Pitoniak said.

It's one of a number of mobile apps in which users can remain anonymous or have their messages or photos evaporate within a short period of time.

Snapchat lets users send photos and videos that can be viewed for only 10 seconds before they evaporate. Whisper, another app, allows users to send and reply to messages anonymously, and Yik Yak lets users post anonymous messages that can be read by people in the surrounding geographic area.

Pitoniak, 17, sees Mutter Mail as "the digital equivalent of a face-to-face conversation."

Young entrepreneurs: Citing obstacles, few take the leap to start their own business

He came up with the idea after reading George Orwell's novel "1984," a story about a fictional society in which Big Brother spies on citizens' every move and "technology and surveillance gets to the point where people's lives are pretty much unbearable," Pitoniak said.

In addition to what he feels is striking a blow for privacy, Pitoniak hopes Mutter Mail also demonstrates his prowess at computer programming and possibly help him land a job in cybersecurity after college. Pitoniak plans on studying computer science in college. He's waiting to hear from schools on the status of his applications.

Drawing a blank? This York Co. artist's book can help

Even though he's still in high school, Pitoniak is already a veteran computer programming. Two years ago, he launched his own programming and web development business.

On this new project, though, it took him 250 to 300 hours over four months to develop the app. It is available to download for free from the Apple store. Twenty four people had downloaded the app as of Thursday, Pitoniak said.

Doing the programming wasn't easy, he said.

"Programming a piece of software, completely on your own, you have to control every single piece of data, every single aspect," Pitoniak said. "If you screw up one semi-colon, it screw the whole thing up."

York College students pitch start-up biz ideas

Daniel  Anderson, Pitoniak's physics teacher at York Suburban High School, helped Pitoniak understand how to encrypt data to keep it secure online.

"People can throw apps together pretty quickly, but Nick was interested in privacy and security," said Amderson, who spent 25 years in the computer industry as a software developer. "He was looking at best practices."

"I think he thought through an app that young people his age would be interested in and he tried to bring it to market, which is pretty cool," Anderson said.