[Galaxy Ace S5830 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tossan:
To be rooted or not to be? [A Fundamental Question]

I guess you already read the news at CyanogenMOD about there thoughts regarding not enabling root access by default but rather give the user the option to be aware of the risk, if he is gonna enabling it by his own decision?

As a user you also should take some minutes and rethink about data security measurements on your device. If you're only using the phone with a prepaid mobile card and don't store confidential data like passwords or credit cards numbers or even do online payments with it, then you don't have to bother with security at all. Just enjoy your phone with the newest and fanciest ROM you would like to.

But in case you're intending to use its full potential, then below is my take on this subject. Read on, if and only if you really want to know about my personnel preferences on this topic. If my post hurts your eyes, ears or mouth in anyway, then please keep them all closed and move on. I'm very sorry, if I've stolen your precious time up to this point. ... ^^

<point-of-no-return>

Stock or Custom?

Stay with unmodded stock rom, if you don't need the features the cooked roms is offering you. If something goes wrong (dialer, keylogger, trojan, ...), then Samsung have to take all the blame and financial loss for you. But only, if you're really carefull yourself about third party Apps. Install only from trustworthy sources and ask yourself, if the App should really get all the permissions it is asking for. Maybe an alternative App will do the same work but beeing less demanding?

Root What?

If you don't understand the consequences of root permissions, then it probably is not what you should looking for.

Opensource or Closed?

Only entrust third party ROMs with opensource code. You might never take a look at it, but there are other tech savvy users/developers, who will raise the issues publicly, if there happens to be any, because they can read the source and point out the security holes and eventually fix them quickly too. Since I'm reading many questions about the PROS or CONS of unofficial and official CyanogenMODs: You should by now be able to answer this question yourself, if you're a security and privacy loving individual.

Themes or Hacks?

If you're missing some features on your current phone, then reconsider to get your hands dirty and do the needed changes yourself. Or at least know howto take the supplied MODs apart and thoroughly compare the modified files with your current installed ones. There is a reason why big companies distributing files with at least a MD5 or SHA1 checksum, you know? But since ACE, GIO and the MINI (->galaxyics) are midrange devices targeting teens as consumers, security or privacy is something most of this users don't want/have to worry about. Anyway, if the changes are not applied to the executable codes (dex files) but rather considered as widely known as theming (change layout, PNGs, color or text codes), then you should be on the riskfree side to apply them without further notice. ... :D

Hope I could give the more concerned users some points to think about towards ROMs and MODs in general.

ToS

[x]