To start off on a lighter note, we think if we were to charge a dollar everytime we featured an encrypted Online communication startup, we would definitely be laughing all the way to the bank by now. For the last year or so, we have been snowed under by requests to feature email systems that promise state-of-the-art encryption or apps bearing a similar business message.
Now comes along peerio, launched yesterday.
peerio claims to be different. To begin with, it is an entire productivity suite, email, chat, storage, that works around the concept of Online encryption. Other encrypted services have data encrypted only when being transmitted to their servers. After that, your messages are stored without encryption. But peerio’s end-to-end encryption has your data is encrypted every step of the way, only to be accessed by the user, & of course, the recipients. Emails cannot be encrypted by the peerio team even.
The new startup has been started by Nadim Kobeissi who has spent much of his time creating software like Cryptocat & Minilock for encrypted instant messages.
peerio is positioned as an encrypted productivity suite for individuals as well as businesses.For now, its available as a Windows & Apple Mac app as well as a Chrome plugin but Nadim has promised mobile apps too.
With a peer-based network & a secure contact verification method, you control who can message you—& who can’t. All users are given a unique cryptographically generated avatar. Confirm the identity of your contacts by having them verify their avatars with you.
Here’s what peerio does for you – don’t remember the name of your file, but you know who sent it? Want to find what your colleague said about that meeting next week? peerio’s search is designed to make answering these questions quickly. Start entering your search & peerio will neatly display relevant messages, files, & contacts in their own tabs. No browsing through long exchanges or digging through folders. Your data finds you.
Besides this clean workspace, peerio’s strict ad-free policy for all users, ensures you are not “disturbed” by Online ads.
peerio’s end-to-end encryption technology is also open sourced & peer-reviewed.
But wait, our readers may remember that late last year, we profiled an encrypted email service called Scryptmail that boasts of some of the features as peerio.
Founder Sergei Krutov had written in telling us:
Image Credit: peerio
