Developers that care about privacy should really start to work on decentralized, backwards compatible applications to replace the services we depend on like email and social media.

I know there are already service out there, but most of them lack the simplicity needed to reach non-technical users. Getting people away from these services is as much a marketing and user adoption problem as it is a technical one.

I'd start with a VPN. I'm personally a big fan of Tunnel Bear as it is incredibly easy to setup and has a good mobile app as well. TorrentFreak has some good VPN reviews. Lots more at https://www.reddit.com/r/vpnreviews/

Some posters in the original thread had reservations about VPNs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980878 .

For me the benefit of a VPN would be protection against my ISP being hacked rather than stopping someone with sufficient motivated from GCHQ accessing my data.

As a tag on to this, set a solid hardened ( to your level of tin foil) firewall, complete with replacing router with open|DDwrt one and setting up a VPN over ssh from within your own home network, this has several benefits, you know the holes in the firewall, you use the bandwidth you are paying for already, it makes for a relatively cheap private cloud that also allows for smaller and or lighter footprint devices that can stream remotely from your home storage and also know that your nfs / remote cloud is under control of someone you trust (yourself)

Updated email on profile but its also on my keybase profile https://keybase.io/linuxmodder ...under my github profile. sheldon DOT corey AT openmailbox DOT org.... Side note if anyone is interested in keybase invite I have about a dozen and a half left, email me at above shown email, I openly and happily solicit PGP mail with the keys shown on my keybase profile.