Meet the free encryption app that promises to put your privacy first

Summary:The Cryptocat developer's new team aims to get easy file and message encryption into everyone's hands, which could give Gmail and Dropbox (and the NSA) a run for their money.

Peerio's core development team, including cryptography head Nadim Kobeissi (back-left) (Image: Peerio)

NEW YORK -- Encryption to most people either just happens, or it doesn't. A select few have the skills to fiddle with keys, code, and command prompts needed to secure emails and documents, but the vast majority rely on tech titans like Google and Dropbox instead to do the hard work.

In the aftermath of the global surveillance leaks, Nadim Kobeissi wants to give ordinary people on the street the keys to their own kingdoms: by making encryption easier to use.

The 24-year-old developer, now living in Paris for his PhD program, spent most of his formative teenage years working on end-to-end secure chat client Cryptocat, as well as miniLock, a passphrase-based encryption standard. A little less than a year ago, Montreal-based tech investor Vincent Drouin tasked him to forge something out of the fire of his previous successes. After Kobeissi carefully crafted an eight-person team, the Peerio app was born.

Peerio is an encrypted messaging and file storage app for Windows, Mac, and the Chrome browsers that takes the likes of Gmail and Outlook, HipChat, and Dropbox to task. The app puts its users in the privacy driving seat, clearly marking for the lay user when something is encrypted.

On Monday, the team unveiled a significant update: a revamped, cleaner user interface, improved synchronization across devices, and an early-April timeframe for its mobile apps. Since launch, the company has seen extraordinary growth, from 50 users in initial testing to 15,000 users in a month after its mid-January debut.

"We're offering all the tools you need to get work done, but also doing so with a level of encryption that most services just simply do not bother to implement," Kobeissi said on the phone.

The app aims to be simple. According to Kobeissi, "There's nothing new to learn," Indeed, the user interface is easy -- with features like Gmail's "compose" window and Dropbox's drag-and-drop functionality included. The user interface and overall experience is a particular focus for the team. Security and privacy shouldn't be difficult, but encryption software has a bad rap for making it so.

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Meet the free encryption app that promises to put your privacy first