The Free Encryption App That Wants to Replace Gmail, Dropbox, and HipChat

Cryptographers devote their careers to the science of securing your communications. Twenty-four-year-old Nadim Kobeissi has devoted his to the art of making that security as easy as possible. His software creations like Cryptocat and Minilock encrypt instant messages or shared files with three-letter-agency-level protection, with user interfaces that require Lincoln-Log-level skills. Now hes combiningelements of his dead-simple apps into what hes calling his biggest release yet, a single platform designed to encrypt everything you and any group of collaborators do on the desktop.

Today, Kobeissi plans to announce Peerio, an encrypted productivity suite meant to help individual users and businesses encrypt everything from IMs to online file storage. The software, initially launching as a Windows and Mac app as well as a Chrome plugin but coming to mobile platforms soon, resembles a simplified Gmail with IM and Google Drive features included. Unlike Gmail, all communication sent viaPeerio are end-to-end encrypted and cant be decrypted by anyone but the recipientnot even someone with access to the Peerio server itself.

With Peerio everything you share or communicate with your team is secured with state-of-the-art encryption, and its as easy as using Gmail. You dont need to learn to use it, says Kobeissi. Peerio brings crypto to where the people are.

Encrypted messages sent using Peerio can have a subject line and are organized in the recipients searchable inbox. But Peerio messages just as easily can be exchanged in rapid-fire one-liners with a press of the return keya hybrid of email and instant messaging. The app also lets you upload and share end-to-end encrypted files of up to 400 megabytes, a limit Kobeissi says will climb in future updates.

Kobeissi hopes Peerio will woo two groups of users. Those who use Gmail, Dropbox, and collaboration software like Slack and Hipchat ought to see it as a significantly more secure alternative designed to foil eavesdroppers. For security-minded people already using venerable but clunky encryption tools like the 20-plus-year-old PGP, its a far simpler option thats not limited to communicating exclusively with fellow crypto-nerds. We wanted to take every possible use case of PGP and put it in a single app and make it better, Kobeissi says.

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The Free Encryption App That Wants to Replace Gmail, Dropbox, and HipChat