Mega (service)

Mega (stylised as: MEGA) is a file hosting service offered by MEGA CLOUD SERVICES LIMITED, a company based in Auckland, New Zealand. The service is offered through web-based apps. MEGA mobile apps are also available for Android and iOS.

Data encryption
Data on MEGA services are end-to-end encrypted client-side using the AES algorithm. As a result, they cannot decrypt or view the content, and cannot be responsible for the contents of uploaded files. 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, offering a reward of up to €10,000 for reporting security problems.

Account options
There are three types of accounts available - free accounts, paid accounts, and business accounts.

Transparency
MEGA publishes an SDK, as well as source code of all their client applications, under the MEGA Limited Code Review Licence, a proprietary source-available licence which only permits usage of the code "for the purposes of review and commentary". The source code was released after former director Kim Dotcom stated that he would "create a MEGA competitor that is completely open source and non-profit" following his departure from MEGA Ltd.

History
MEGA launched in 2013 as a cloud service with a tagline of "The Privacy Company". On 4 July 2013, the MEGA Android application was released on the Google Play marketplace. Four days later, on 8 July 2013, the MEGA software development kit (SDK) and affiliate program was released. On 26 November 2013, the official MEGA iOS application was released on the App Store marketplace. On 20 January 2014, the official MEGAsync application was released for Windows and on 6 September 2014, the official MEGAsync application was released for Linux.

In January 2016, MEGA announced that the service has 35 million registered users that have uploaded 12 billion files. Later in 2016, MEGA Ltd. released the source code to their client-side software under the Mega Limited Code Review License, a source-available software license, on GitHub. This allows independent verification of the correctness and integrity of the implementation of MEGA's cryptographic model and service reliability.

In 2020, it reached a user-base of 195 million users. This was also its first year turning a profit. In 2021, MEGA added a domain name to include Mega.io and Mega.nz. The .io domain was chosen to reflect the global nature of MEGA which has more than 200 million registered users in over 215 countries/territories. MEGA continues to say that the .io pages are also more likely to be properly indexed by search engines than the current .nz pages, which are often incorrectly treated as only being relevant to New Zealand searches. Later in 2021, MEGA shared their transparency report where they record 230 million registered users storing 107 billion files.

MEGAchat
In February 2013, MEGA announced it would be expanding into e-mail, chat, voice, video, and mobile. In December 2014, MEGA said it would "soon" launch a browser-based chat service. In mid-January 2015, MEGA launched MegaChat in beta, marketed as a web-based, encrypted alternative to applications like Skype and FaceTime.

Browser extension
On 5 September 2018, it was reported that the extension on the Chrome Web Store was compromised by the addition of code designed to steal website credentials and cryptocurrency. The original code on the GitHub page was not affected.

MEGA VPN
In December 2023, MEGA announced a new product to help users protect their privacy while online – MEGA VPN.