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web console and native-application/owning-your-emails is not a contradiction though, look at: https://www.mailpile.is/ It's in beta, and I'm not sure whether it will ever get out, but it looks nice.

I self-host and encrypt where possible. For other things, I use providers as trustworthy as I can find.

Email privacy is a tough problem, but a solvable one. I'm working on a project that will give me gmail-like convenience without entrusting my data to Google, and might eventually grow automated/transparent encryption capabilities. It's going to be a while before it's usable, though; nobody is paying me to work on it, so it doesn't get enough of my time. (The mailpile project overlaps some of my goals in this area, and might be worth a look to anyone interested in the topic.)

A Facebook replacement is another tough one, perhaps even tougher than email, but I believe it's also solvable.

Please keep asking questions like this, and sharing what you discover. The more of us we have thinking about these problems, the more likely we are to work out their solutions.

I know quite a few people who have started using GPG via the Enigmail plug-in for Thunderbird lately.

There are several problems with this solution:

1. The "quick" start guide would be very difficult to follow for someone who isn't sufficiently motivated. The only people I know who use GPG are people who are buying illegal narcotics off of the darknets. I'm not saying that using GPG means that you're a criminal. I'm just saying that they are the ones who are motivated to learn GPG because their freedom depends on it!

2. It puts annoying shit in your email message. The PGP headers and footers, the signature, the attached public key. That's annoying for people to receive if they don't know what it is.

3. It breaks search. How can I do a server side IMAP search of all of my email if the emails are encrypted?

4. To be useful, you need to publish your public key. To publish you public key, you need to publish your email address. Welcome to spam city.

5. To be secure, you need a secure passphrase. To sign an email or read an email, you need to type in your passphrase. This is super tedious.

I'm on board that email should be more secure, but Enigmail is not the answer. It's just not. When I want to secure my web browsing in transit, I type "https". I can tell my mom to make sure the URL says "https". Most chat programs use encryption by default now, no effort required on the part of the user. Secure email needs to be as easy as secure web browsing or secure IMing. I should be able to tell my mom how to use it in less than 60 seconds--that's how we'll know we've arrived.

I'm actually liking the way the mailpile is solving this. It's not ready for mom yet, but it's a step in the right direction. Local webmail. Stores email unencrypted so search works, but it's really easy to access GPG sign/encrypt. I don't think IMAP search works, and I have no idea how it works with mobile. But anyway, it's less shitty than Enigmail/Thunderbird.

And this is why Schneier undid 10 years NSA work on subverting encryption algorithms. Terrorists are a miniscule threat compared to our Governments and Secret Services

The US no longer has a legitimate "government (..) for the people." The UK never did, except occasionally by chance.

We know that power like this is abused and attracts those who will abuse it. We must consider whether we want our children to live in a free country.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

We need to support projects like MailPile and BitMessage. Maybe some of you know of or are working on other projects you'd care to mention.

You should offer the good people developing Mailpile a piece of your mind. This might be right up their alley.

According to the blog, the account has been unfrozen.

I have only recently heard about this project and haven't investigated too closely yet, but they seem to be trying to solve similar issues, and have an indiegogo campaign active:

http://www.mailpile.is/

"Does anyone have replacement recommendations for people who used these services?" There is a valiant effort to create an alternative. It's called mailpile --> http://www.mailpile.is/ and you can help jumpstart it by donating here --> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mailpile-taking-e-mail-back. Go now...fly like the wind.