AW Poll: privacy or functionality? What do you think is important?

It is privacy week at Androidworld and in the AW Poll this time we want to investigate what our readers think is most important: do they choose the service with the best functionalities or does privacy come first?

Privacy vs functionality

For all popular apps and services, there are numerous alternatives that come out with stricter security, more respect for your privacy and code that you can consult open-source. If you have any questions about reliability, take a look at the code.

So why don’t we all use OpenMaps for navigation, or DuckDuckGo as a search engine? There are several reasons for this. First you have a habit. An average satisfied user who has used Chrome for years will not just get started with the Vivaldi browser. On the other hand, many of these tools don’t have the marketing machine and revenue that a major tech company has. They have a lower turnover because they miss out on income from personalized advertising and in many cases work with a team that consists partly of volunteers. The services often also look a bit less slick and in certain cases do not score very well when it comes to ease of use.

“That is the core problem of internet security at the moment: the difficult trade-off you as a developer make between the promise of security and privacy on the one hand, and functionality on the other,” said ESET Netherlands security expert Donny Maasland in a recent interview to Androidworld. For companies that emphasize privacy, it is more difficult to develop new functions at the same pace. On the other hand, you make sure that your data does not fall into the hands of a large tech company that collects the information about you in order to make money with advertisements.

AW Poll

But does it have to be a problem that privacy-friendly apps and services look less slick, lack some features and are less user-friendly? We want to ask you that in this AW Poll. Leave your vote and further explain your answer in the comments at the bottom of this article.

Theme week privacy on Androidworld

Today’s AW Poll is part of Androidworld’s privacy theme week. Do you have a question about the topic we discuss during this theme week or ideas or tips? Let us know in the comments below this article (also check our Android app). You can also email us via this e-mail address or leave a message on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can also ask us questions via this Telegram group or this Signal group. Would you rather send one of the editors a tip? Then you can too!