WEDG wants to make a difference in personal cloud privacy

Shehbaz Afzal, CEO of WEDG, is ready to share what he and his group have been working on for the past months, and he has taken to Indiegogo to raise funding. WEDG is promoted as "a revolutionary cloud email and storage solution with 512-bit encryption, 1TB of storage," and not carrying monthly fees.

The promotional video on the Indiegogo site said that, with the "unprecedented threats" to our privacy, having most people worried about their online privacy, the big question is, how secure are all those cloud solutions for data protection? Afzal's solution involves activating a secure cloud with a device that he calls the WEDG, a self-hosted cloud solution that puts you in the driver's seat. Your data is not in a data center a million miles away, said the video. You control it for a monthly fee "which we know you can afford." The amount is Nothing, noted the video (for a whole terabyte, quite cheap). WEDG comes with a dedicated mobile app.

For developers, WED has an API. The WEDG team said that "although WEDG is built on a highly customized Linux distribution there are no language restrictions for developers, and any developer skills, including C, C++, PHP, Python, and Ruby, are welcome."

All data stored on the WEG is encrypted; the entire user folder is encrypted and the user can generate and manage the keys, allowing control of one's privacy and preventing unauthorized access to files. Its built- in key management helps exchange public keys with trusted users. Users are responsible for their own disk-level encryption and encryption key. The team built the WEDG's 512-bit disk encryption using XTS-AES..

Black and white WEDG is built of a single material, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). "Disguised behind the PMMA fascia," said the campaign page, "are LEDs for cosmetic and notification purposes."

The company has two types on offer, WEDG with ARM and WEDG with Intel. Prices vary according to option chosen; for £219GBP, for example, one gets the WEDGE Pro with Intel in black or white with a 1TB drive included. Estimated delivery is March next year.

For £129GBP one can get a drive-less WEDG with ARM in black, also with an estimated delivery of March next year.

They said their shipping partners will ship to almost all countries; they will ship the WEDG with a mains adapter for the user's region, they added.

The motto for the Manchester, UK-based company, founded last year, is "For those with nothing to hide and something to protect."

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