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About Mega
History
Kim Dotcom's first file-hosting site Megaupload was seized and shut down on 19 January 2012 by the United States Department of Justice, which began criminal cases against its owners. After Gabon denied the new company domain name me.ga, Kim Dotcom announced it would instead be registered in his home country of New Zealand under the domain name mega.co.nz.Mega launched on 19 January 2013 - a year after Dotcom's original site was shut down. Kim Dotcom reported on Twitter getting over 100,000 registered within the first hour, speculating that this may make Mega the fastest-growing startup in history.Kim Dotcom also reported on Twitter, that the site was extremely busy, and received thousands of user registrations per minute at the time of the tweet.Kim later reported Mega having more than 1 million registered users, and 60 uploads completed every second. To promote his new website, Kim Dotcom hired ice cream chef Gianpaolo Grazioli to create a mega flavour in an extravaganza for his followers. Three days later that number was updated to 500 uploads completed every second. On 7 February 2013, it was announced that the former Chief Executive of InternetNZ, Vikram Kumar, would step in as the new CEO of Mega. Lentino would instead maintain a seat as a director with Mega, and continue to provide his entrepreneurial spirit and skills to the enterprise, he said.
Data encryption
Dotcom has said that data on the Mega service will be encrypted client-side using an advanced AES algorithm. Since Mega does not know the encryption keys to uploaded files, they cannot decrypt and view the content. Therefore, they cannot be responsible for the contents of uploaded files.Dotcom stated that encrypting files allows them to work with a larger number of data hosting companies around the world, decreasing the likelihood of a Megaupload-style seizure of servers by one government. He mentioned in an interview with Ars Technica that "Each file will be kept with at least two different hosters, [in] at least two different locations," and "That’s a great added benefit for us because you can work with the smallest, most unreliable [hosting] companies. It doesn’t matter because they can’t do anything with that data."
In the first few weeks after the Mega launch, various security problems were found that researchers said an attacker could use to gain access to a logged-in user's files.In response, Mega started a vulnerability reward program which offers a reward of up to €10,000 for reporting security problems to Mega.
The Mega team indicated that some companies, such as film studios, will have direct access to remove files if they discover the encryption keys online and determine that the content infringes their copyright. Dotcom added that if such companies want to use that tool they would have to agree, prior to receiving access, not to sue Mega or hold the site accountable for the actions of its users.
Data allowances
Free account users are provided with one option:
50 GB of storage space (10 GB bandwidth, every 30 minutes it clears 500 MB)[citation needed]
Paid account users are provided with three tiers of options:
500 GB storage (1 TB bandwidth per month)
2 TB storage (4 TB bandwidth per month)
4 TB storage (8 TB bandwidth per month)
API
Mega has released some documentation of its API so developers can write their own applications.
According to Mega, in the near future they will provide reference client libraries/SDKs for various programming languages. For now, their JavaScript site code is the only official sample code available, although some programmers have developed samples of the Mega API in Python, PHP,and C#, and some applications have started to appear, including features like online video and file synchronization.
Limitations
According to Mega, the site "works with all major current browsers", but there can be some inconveniences to using browsers other than Google Chrome or Firefox. For example, with Internet Explorer 10, as it has a "memory leak in the Blob saving functionality, you have to close and reopen the Mega tab every couple of hundred megabytes of inbound file transfer". Mega is not compatible with Safari.
See also
Comparison of file hosting services
Comparison of file synchronization software
Comparison of online backup services
