Our applications and services include third-party technology or code, some of which may use your data in different ways. Opera’s privacy policy also describes how third party partners will be collecting your data: What are these partners and other countries? Who knows. This is also quite concerning as it is it seems to be intentionally worded in a vague and open-ended manner. When we do collect personal data, it may be transferred to partners in countries other than Singapore. The next problem we come to is data transfers – how your data is transferred to different jurisdictions. This is the same business model as Google, after all (see the Google alternatives guide). More data means better targeted ads and more advertising revenue. This is the exact opposite of privacy - but in the context of an advertising business, it makes sense. No privacy-oriented service should be collecting usage data. The big red flag here is usage data and how this is connected to your unique ID. This is rather misleading given the new ownership and Singapore jurisdiction the business actually operates under. The Opera contact page maintains the facade of a European business with a Norwegian flag and an Oslo address for the company’s “Headquarters”. We cover this topic more in the TunnelBear review. McAfee, the US cybersecurity company, purchased TunnelBear in March 2018 for an undisclosed amount. Then, in 2021, Kape purchased ExpressVPN. Later in 2019, Kape also purchased Private Internet Access. CyberGhost VPN was purchased by an ad-tech company, Kape Technologies, in 2016 for about $10 million. This is also a trend we’ve seen in the VPN industry.
Ltd., which is a Singapore-based company. Opera’s Terms of Service list the owner as Opera Unite Pte. In July 2016, Opera was sold to a Chinese consortium led by Qihoo 360 and the Chinese billionaire Zhou Yahui. Opera began as a Norwegian company that offered a Presto-based web browser for most operating systems, until switching to Chromium in 2013.
This issue becomes even more interesting when you examine who (now) owns Opera… Who owns Opera VPN? We’ll examine Oper’s privacy policy in detail further below (spoiler: it’s not good). As the saying goes: If you are not paying for the product, chances are that YOU are the product. In summary: Not only is Opera’s “Free VPN” no VPN at all, but you also potentially compromise your privacy when using it.
Additionally, SurfEasy logs Usage and Bandwidth data. According to their privacy statement Opera reserves the right to pass on data to third parties for advertising and marketing purposes. This becomes worrisome when you look at Opera’s business model. This device_id is sent to the proxy for every browsing request and will remain permanently tied to the browser. When setting up the proxy, the browser requests a “device_id” which contains a unique user ID. Perfect Privacy wrote an interesting blog post where they explain some of the dangers of the Opera browser VPN: According to many experts, the answer is no, Opera VPN is not safe or secure.
Opera with vpn cannot browse websites free#
Lots of people are wondering if Opera’s free VPN is safe and secure. Firefox recently launched a “Firefox Private Network” that many are falsely calling “ Firefox VPN” – despite it also not being a VPN. Technically, Opera should not be marketing this as a VPN at all, but that’s what they are doing. While Opera may have done this little tweak of definitions with the best intentions, end users should understand that this free service by Opera is nowhere near the security provided by a real VPN solution,” Per Thorsheim, founder of PasswordsCon, commented. Other tools you use, including for example email clients like Outlook, won’t use this ‘VPN’,” Špaček told Help Net Security.
Opera with vpn cannot browse websites full#
You still need a full VPN if privacy is what you care about (and you should care about your privacy). Michal Špaček, a web developer and security engineer based in Prague, researched the way Opera’s VPN works and discovered there’s more marketing than security behind Opera’s claims. HelpNetSecurity had this to say about Opera’s claims:
In other words, Opera’s “free VPN” is not a VPN at all, but rather just a browser proxy. Unlike a true VPN, Opera’s “VPN” only works within the browser, rather than encrypting all traffic on your operating system. Opera VPN is a browser proxy that encrypts traffic between the Opera browser and a proxy server.
0 kommentar(er)
