MEGA: encrypted Messenger coming this Summer!

[Artsy Xeemy]

Users from all over the world fear for their own anonymity and privacy on the net due to recent incidents as the NSA scandal - which led to a wave of turmoil and criticism - and the increase of online monitoring. Kim Dotcom - founder of share hoster Mega - has announced his plans to develop an encrypted messenger, that is supposed to get launched already in 4 until 6 weeks. For the start, this chat platform is going to work web-based, but there might be apps for mobile devices in some months said Dotcom. An encoded e-mail service is in development as well and ready for use in six months, if everything goes accordingly. With those preparations and plans, the founder of one-click hoster Megaupload - which was taken offline by the FBI - gets many steps closer to his slogan "The Privacy Company: Bigger. Better. Faster. Stronger. Safer."

The NSA scandal should awake much more interest in Kim's coming Messenger. Beside Dotcom, also Peter Sunde - co-founder of BitTorrent index "The Pirate Bay" - is currently working on his own bug-proof messenger. He has already collected around 100.000 USD in less than 2 days for his yet incomplete project.

Kim Dotcom reminds of Megaupload via his Twitter account. Megaupload constituted more or less 4% of internet traffic without any backdoors or US-jurisdiction. Meanwhile, most users are registered at "NSA's" Dropbox .

 Spoiler

Original source: Mega: Verschlüsselter Messenger im Sommer!

[Acid]

Sounds like an interesting project, I will give this new messenger a try for sure. I'm only using skype since MSN merged with Skype, it's time for a new messenger

[GetdownB]

he's just asking for trouble.. again and again.

[Artsy Xeemy]

Originally Posted by GetdownB

he's just asking for trouble.. again and again.

Well... I think that he's doing this to show, what's possible and what's going wrong in terms of Internet laws and data distribution. He may be exceeding his rights, but he also is one kind of activist - fighting for rights and desires of many users.

[»jD«]

There is nothing wrong with building a messenger. If the NSA ask him for backdoor access into it and he declines, they can't bring him up on legal terms... So I don't see how he is asking for trouble?

-jD

[Piskotik]

And here is mobile messenger by one of the creators of TPB

[Mashkin]

There's already a number of secure messengers on the Internet. One of them (which I tried personally) is RetroShare - which uses asymmetric cryptography to encryct and validate identities as well as chats and mails (even files) and uses a p2p model.

Everyone using a mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird can also (for years already) encrypt and sign emails - but people are just too lazy to use it.
There are free certificate issuers available, it is easy to setup encryption in the applications and it is reasonably safe.

But again... people are crying for security and yet are too lazy to just set things up in a few minutes and share some certificates.