I hear a lot of conspiring among twitter and discord users, but I’m wondering if any of it is true? Sure, it’s owned mostly by a Chinese guy, but does that really mean it’s “spyware”? There isn’t any evidence supporting that idea, is there?
If you concern your privacy, then don’t use opera, or chrome, or anything that isn’t non-commercial open source really. If you want the sidebar and the dynamic wallpaper that bad, just use it. Nobody cares.
There is no evidence for opera sending data to china directly. Their headquarter is in UE so they must repect the UE laws which are the strongest in the world. If someone have evidences of the opposite, I’m ok to listen to them.
Opera is on the same terms as Edge or Chrome when it comes to Privacy. They do spy on you (you can tone down those settings btw) but it’s mostly to serve you ads and “personalized experiences” as they call them.
Apart from that, Opera did do some shady loans over in Africa, but at this point, every mainstream browser was involved in scandals in the past 5 years (Vivaldi so far has a clean record and it’s the only one I think).
So in terms of security Opera is fine, privacy well not so much. Give it a try and see if you like it I guess.
There are people who have got it into their heads that Opera sends your data to the CCP, but to be honest I don’t believe it. I think all of this is based on pure guesswork rather than evidence.
It’s not confirmed but opera GX has a lot of suspicious stuff as well their company, wouldn’t recommend using it
Opera is indeed a good browser which I have been using till recently I migrated to Vivaldi because of a few issues that their team is reluctant to fix on Linux builds particularly the video playing issues.
Sure, it’s owned mostly by a Chinese guy, but does that really mean it’s “spyware”?
Does a bear shit in the woods?
It’s because they’re owned by a Chinese company. However, they appear to be headquartered in the EU, so legally they’re required to obey GDPR, at least for EU residents. I don’t think their software is spyware (software that’s installed without permission and pings home). It’s become pretty easy to discover spyware and monitor network connections, so it would’ve been made public by now.
However, I don’t see the appeal of Opera GX. Chrome/Chromium is owned by Google, so it’s backed by brand recognition. Firefox is defined by privacy and freedom. Vivaldi’s customizability is unrivaled. Brave combines privacy and crypto.
What is Opera GX about? Sure, the G stands for gaming. But how exactly is it helpful for gamers? I see they have a file-sharing service, but that’s not integral to video games. Same with the built-in adblocker, which remains mediocre. Themes? Hard to beat 500,000 themes available on the Firefox Add-ons store. Light and dark themes? All other mainstream browsers have had it for years.
It feels like a browser in search of a soul.
The best potential feature of Opera GX seems to be the VPN. Opera offers a free VPN service to browser users. And they make a big claim: your IP address is not logged, and the sites you visit are not collected. Worried about the police knocking at your door? Fear not, for “we inform those authorities that we are not able to share user data because we do not have it.”
It doesn’t use tunneling, so it’s essentially a proxy. It only works within the browser (unless you get VPN Pro). Being located in a 9 Eyes country is worrisome. But it appears it was audited last year by Cure53, so maybe that will assuage some protestors.
For all intents and purposes, there are better options for browsers and VPNs than Opera’s. I don’t think it’s spyware, but ultimately, Opera is an advertising business. That’s how they make hundreds of millions of dollars every year. You can’t disable their advertising, even though they brag about the built-in adblocker.
Perhaps among the 8.1 billion people, there are indeed millions searching for something like “gaming browser”, or getting bombarded by ads to install one. So it makes sense why there’s such a massive increase in the adoption of their browser. (Although, to be frank, I don’t get the concept of a mobile “gaming browser” at all.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/14bisgq/opera_gx_video_on_their_shady_practices_cool_and/
Read the comments as well.
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/browsers#opera
Opera (company) - Wikipedia Opera owner, Beijing Kunlun Tech Co., Ltd. (Zhou Yahui) & Keeneyes Future Holdings Inc (Zhou Yahui).
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3987506
“All Chinese companies, public or private, are required to have a member of the CCP on staff to hand down official party edicts. In addition, many companies have an internal CCP committee that comprises part of the governance structure.”
“The Chinese government has likely taken a significant interest in that data, which could be useful in targeting dissidents at home and for blackmail abroad. As a Chinese company, there is likely nothing Kunlun could do to prevent the government from accessing user data.”
It’s also a closed source chromium rebuild. Meaning you can’t see what it does internally.
I tried using the Opera One browser, and when I imported data from my other browsers, it automatically logged me into all my accounts without asking for my password again. This might seem convenient, but it’s not very good for privacy. So, if you’re concerned about your privacy, I wouldn’t recommend using Opera GX.
The only safe browser is the open source you compile by yourself after checking the code.
Yup, and honestly, they are quite open with this during installation. Just disable all of the boxes in the installation process under “Data Collection” - it says there:
- General interests based on websites you may visit or search
- General location
- Personalized content
- Ads personalized based on your interests
Disable those.
These are all legitimate ways of earning money for them, in which they can sell (not literally, but ‘help’) these data to advertisers - this is naturally how ads work.
But other than that, the amount of features it provides greatly outweighs any privacy concerns or the type of data they are selling in my opinion.
Dont they say they send data to all their parnters and a lot of their partners are in china so sent to the chinese government since thats how business works there.
Their privacy policy states they send data to all their partners. They have many that are chinese and therefore send data to the CCP since thats how business law works in that country. So yes china has your data.
Exactly. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me:
TikTok: TikTok admits using its app to spy on reporters in effort to track leaks | TikTok | The Guardian
Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, ZTE: How China's Tech Giants Like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu Aid Spy Agencies
Also resource limitation, you can limit your max ram, CPU, and internet bandwidth, could see that as useful for gamers.
“What is Opera GX about? Sure, the G stands for gaming. But how exactly is it helpful for gamers? I see they have a file-sharing service, but that’s not integral to video games. Same with the built-in adblocker, which remains mediocre. Themes? Hard to beat 500,000 themes available on the Firefox Add-ons store. Light and dark themes? All other mainstream browsers have had it for years.”
Okay come everybody and roast me for this lol.
The sidebar of opera browser is almost unique in market. You just can’t mimic it with other browsers except for Vivaldi (maybe). Also, for the “enjoyer” there is no chance to beat Opera mods and modules. With mods you can even add custom new tab opening sound lol. So of course for people who are heavy browsing it will be annoying but here is the magical words “Not for you”. Yeap is that simple. Stop being fanatics and answer the questions or enjoy the topic instead of voluntery marketing
Folks, is it really worth to give credits to Firefox? Another Gecko user? Yes let’s talk about it. Most of the ff forks are better than ff itself lmao. Firefox literally have a huge source of money and literally does less job than it forks which they developed by non commercial people.
Take a look Tencent Games and it’s companies. You’ll get shocked.