Kim Dotcom, the founder of the Mega file hosting service, revealed that he is preparing to release a fully-encrypted video calling and chat service which will be able to protect the communications activities of users from surveillance being carried out by the government.
The service is being positioned by Kim Dotcom as a service that is more secure for chatting and collaborating online, as it is free from government spying and surveillance. This security is partly due to the fact that Mega is based in New Zealand.
"Mega will soon release a fully encrypted and browser-based video call and chat service including high-speed file transfers. Bye Bye Skype." tweeted the entrepreneur, singling out Microsoft-owned Skype as a software that apparently is unsafe for users. However, Skype uses encryption for all communications between Skype users, whether it be voice calls, video calls, file transfers or instant messages.
Kim Dotcom has previously been releasing teasers for the app. However, it seems that the software is almost ready to be launched.
"No U.S.-based online service provider can be trusted with your data," said Kim Dotcom in a separate tweet. "They must provide the U.S. government with backdoors."
Information that was leaked in 2013 by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, revealed that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom have been accessing user information from the databases of online service providers.
While Kim Dotcom has not given a specific release date, it seems that the service will be called MegaChat as he refers to it in his tweets and as seen in an early demo of the software.
"I will tweet about beta invites to #MegaChat in the coming weeks. This is going to be THE END of NSA mass surveillance & YOU WILL LOVE IT!" tweeted Kim Dotcom.
Kim Dotcom did not give a precise launch date for the new service, but it should be released very soon.
WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, added end-to-end encryption to its service this year, as part of a much bigger trend among companies that continue to seek better protection for the privacy of its users and their messages, whether it be from hackers or from the government.
According to another tweet by Kim Dotcom, the government of New Zealand assisted Hollywood in taking down Megaupload, the previous iteration of Mega for file sharing. He adds that Mega now boasts three times more bandwidth compared to the entire country of New Zealand.
