Using it now with Opera Touch (a relatively new discovery that's excellent for browsing with Android tablets). Ad blocking on, dark theme on and TAS is responsive and looks great. Also have Edge installed as a standby.
Meant to add, it goes into a deep sleep just with the power off button, no need to shutdown. The battery life reports 3 days left. It's still on its initial charge!
I've just been having a play with Opera on the PC, and got quite interested when I read that it came with a totally free and unrestricted, VPN.
Giving it a go, I was initially quite surprised with the free VPN's ability to not only recognise the fact that I normally connect to the net via IPV6, but also to issue me a new IPV6 address via the VPN as long as I choose either the "Europe" or the "Optimal Location" settings. If I choose "Americas" or "Asia" it drops back to IPV4.
However (there's always a "however" isn't there?) doing a reverse lookup on the IPV6 address when the VPN is configured to be in Europe gives a site owned by Hern Labs Ab, in Linköping, Sweden, but with a physical location of somewhere called Potwin, Kansas. "Asia" thinks it's in Switzerland, and "Americas" comes back with the same IP address as Asia.
Time to do a bit more digging.
First news - Opera VPN is not a VPN, it's actually a proxy server arrangement. What's the difference? A VPN will encrypt your data, keeping you "safe" online - a proxy encrypts nothing. That's is fine if you just want watch Netflix etc., but if you actually care about true anonymity, forget it.
Next up, Opera’s new Privacy Policy for computers is fairly transparent. They admit that a
unique ID is used to track “
the product features you use, how often you use the app, runtime environment and UI session activity.” However, they claim that the device ID isn’t linked with your personal account (although, that doesn’t really make much sense). Opera actually logs all of your information, That's ALL of your information.
As if that wasn't enough, the jurisdictional issues are mind-bending. Technically, Opera is a Norwegian company, but their VPN services are managed by SurfEasy, a Canadian company acquired by Opera a few years ago.
Canada is a member of the 5 Eyes Surveillance Alliance, an espionage agreement between them and the United States, Australia, New Zealand and The United Kingdom. The alliance pools their information gathering efforts, so if one country has information on you, they share it with the other four. That means not only is Opera VPN logging all of your activity and information, but they are required to hand it over to the Canadian government if asked, who can then had it over to any one of the other four "eyes".
In 2018 a rep from Opera reached out to confirm that they’re a Norwegian company, governed by Norway’s strict privacy laws. But, and here’s the (even more) confusing part, although they acquired SurfEasy a few years back, more recently SurfEasy was acquired by Symantec, who are American. Despite that, SurfEasy is still listed as a Canadian company. BUT, in April 2018, Opera PR reportedly told
Android Police that, “
Opera VPN is an app owned by SurfEasy, which is no longer part of Opera Software.”
Confusing, right? So does it fall under Norwegian or Canadian privacy rights, or even American privacy rights? It’s hard to tell unless there’s more transparency around who actually owns the actual product. Good luck with that.
To sum up, Opera VPN isn't a VPN, it doesn't encrypt any of your data, and if you want to use it even remotely like you would a "proper" VPN, say to watch content from a foreign country that's not supposed to be available outside of the country of origin, you can't, because you have no idea where the proxy server is that you just connected to, and no way of choosing a location for it. It will not keep you safe from prying eyes, and all of your data may, legally, belong to any one of several countries.
It does work with Netflix, which is good, but you cannot "torrent" with it, and there is zero customer support for the VPN feature, only a general Opera support forum. In a recent survey by thebestvpn.com it came 76
th out of 78 VPNs tested.
In essence, though, privacy-wise it makes Huawei kit look like a safe bet.
Being a glutton for punishment, I'm now downloading the new MS Edge (based on Chromium) from the Dev Channel
