Mega, a free cloud storage and file hosting service founded by German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has been taken over by a Chinese Fraudster, Hollywood and the New Zealand government, and Dotcom doesn’t think your data is “safe” anymore.
Mega no longer ‘safe’
Since his resignation as the company’s director in 2013, Dotcom hasn’t taken a management role nor has taken part in the company board. Nevertheless, he has been an outspoken critic of state authority, privacy and the global monetary system.
"The company has suffered from a hostile takeover by a Chinese investor who is wanted in China for fraud,” explained Dotcom. “He used a number of straw-men and businesses to accumulate more and more Mega shares. Recently his shares have been seized by the NZ government. Which means the NZ government is in control.”
Moreover, due to Dotcom’s ex-wife’s dispute with several Hollywood Studios in 2014, some shares of the Dotcom family have been seized by Hollywood as well.
“Hollywood has seized all the Megashares in the family trust that was set up for my children,” said Dotcom, adding:
“As a result of this and a number of other confidential issues I don't trust Mega anymore. I don't think your data is safe.”
Encryption & decentralization on the rise
During a Slashdot Q&A in July, Dotcom predicted that cloud services or businesses that offer safe encryption will eventually beat out platforms that do not.
“The booming encryption market has been created by the actions of the US government. Businesses that offer verifiably safe encryption will outperform those that don't. Now that the people are aware of what's going on they will demand more privacy options from the services and products they purchase,” said Dotcom.
Today, services like sync.com and syncthing.net are just some of the bitcoin friendly, secure and open encryption data storage platforms that are vying for the major cloud storage market against established players like Dropbox, Mega and Hightail.
Many have begun to use decentralized cloud storage services that cannot turn over data to the government because the data is not centrally stored on servers. Even if the government demands customer data and sensitive information, decentralized platforms cannot oblige since all of the information is actually stored across a distributed network of user nodes.
“Governments will struggle to stop or control encryption and technology will prevail,” added Dotcom. “That is good for all of us. But it's sad that technology has to safeguard our human rights because our governments failed to do so.”