Kim Dotcom's Mega is working on a secure, encrypted email service that promises to include all the functionalities of modern cloud-based services while keeping messages safe from snooping.

Just several days after encrypted email services Lavabit and Silent Circle shut down, citing concerns related to NSA surveillance and government requests for user data, Mega's CEO Vikram Kumar confirmed rumors that Mega is developing an encrypted email service.

Kumar told ZDnet that the service is still a work in progress and it's hard to give customers the functionalities they expect from Gmail while also encrypting messages.

"The biggest tech hurdle is providing email functionality that people expect, such as searching emails, that are trivial to provide if emails are stored in plain text (or available in plain text) on the server side," Kumar said. "If all the server can see is encrypted text, as is the case with true end-to-end encryption, then all the functionality has to be built client side. [That's] not quite impossible, but very, very hard. That's why even Silent Circle didn't go there."

Thus, Kumar warned a service from Mega may take some time. "[It's] exciting stuff, but very hard, so I think it will take months more to crack it. But Mega will never launch anything that undermines its end-to-end encryption core security proposition and doesn't work for the mythical grandmother."

The Mega CEO also praised Lavabit and Silent Circle's "acts of privacy seppuku." Seppuku is a form of Japanese ritual suicide to preserve ones honor.

Would you use Mega's encrypted email service? Tell us in the comments.

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