Brits were more likely to ditch Facebook than Huawei service products, an Open-Xchange poll published on Friday revealed.
The UK consumer poll was conducted by Censuswide, which studied the attitudes towards big messaging platform providers such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and others, as well as consumer trust in big tech companies.
Roughly a third (32 percent) said that they would stop using products and services from Facebook, with 14 percent stating they would also stop using WhatsApp and Instagram.
But only 11 percent said that they would stop using Huawei products, despite US accusations that Huawei spies on its clients and customer base and poses a national security threat. 10 percent said that they would sever ties with Google and 11 with Apple.
Around half of those polled said that they did not believe that big messaging platforms like Facebook and others respected their privacy, with over half stating that they did not trust them with personal data.
Only five percent of those polled across the UK said that they 'completely' trusted big messaging platforms on how they handle data.
Just six percent of responders said that big US tech firms 'completely' respected their privacy rights, indicating deep issues of trust on data sharing.
A whopping 73 percent of British participants said that they had seen their trusts in big messaging platform providers erode over the last two years, with just 3 percent 'strongly disagreeing' with this statement, the survey found.
87 percent of UK consumers said that they would switch to a more trustworthy provider, according to the findings.
Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange, said: “Today's biggest privacy risks arguably come from the big messaging platform providers. These businesses are essentially utilities that we rely upon for personal and business communications; yet for a huge proportion of us, trust in these firms is at an all-time low.
He added that such a "significant chunk" of the UK population distrusting chat applications indicated that a "new approach to instant messaging" was needed.
The news comes after the US House Judiciary Committee set a 15 October deadline for Big Tech companies to provide documents for an inquiry on whether the firms had abused consumers via their market activities.
The committee has received submissions from Apple, Amazon, Google parent company Alphabet, Facebook and others, according to lawmakers.
The House lawmakers, who currently look into the Big Tech companies’ activities, have confirmed that they have received an initial batch of relevant documents from the firms.
News also revealed that sales on Huawei revenues grew 24 percent year-on-year the first nine months of 2019, despite Washington's efforts to block market access to the Chinese tech giant's global business operations and access to key components from chipmakers Qualcomm, Intel, Broadcomm, and others. The Trump administration also placed Huawei, ZTE and over 70 Chinese firms on an entities list in May in hopes to limit Huawei's market shares and 5G ambitions, citing 'national security threats'.