Don't use the Opera browser

[GreyGeek]

The story is a year old but I don't remember reading about it last summer. Do you?

It is now owned by a Chinese company with a shady reputation.
http://gbtimes.com/business/new-chin...era-browser-ai
They plan to use "AI" and their purchase also includes Opera's privacy features and VPN features. Talk about letting the Fox guard the henhouse.

Incredulously, the US was "worried" about the security implicationsof the Chinese purchase. This concern caused the Norway firm to sell only part of the company's assets to the Chinese firm.

Kim Komando notes:

The two parties re-worked the deal and cut the price in half to an amount equaling $600 million. The new agreement gives the Chinese group Opera's mobile and desktop browsers along with their privacy and performance apps but doesn't include Opera's lucrative advertising, gaming and television platforms.


Would you feel safe and secure surfing the web on a browser owned by the Chinese?

Last summer I reviewed both IPFS and ZeroNet and dismissed them both because they still use ISPs which the government controls and their "Distributed Web" could be cut off at the knees at any time. They also depend on DNS. And, equally important, I didn't have the disk space or bandwidth to be an effective node. Now I do. IPFS has created a static copy of Wikipedia for Turkey but it is not dynamic. Since my last review IPFS and ZeroNet are working on ways of establishing dynamic social websites that are distributed through several nodes.

[jglen490]

The Chinese aren't the only ones who are not to be distrusted in "all things web".

I used to like Opera, a long time ago. I tried it recently, and it really sucks in the UI department. It seemed to be very unintuitive and awkward. I dumped it, but only for that reason.

Basically, it doesn't matter what browser one uses. If it isn't the NSA snooping on our every move, it's the Russians, and worse than that it's commerce doing their best social engineering to get us to buy stuff we know nothing about and could care less about owning.

I've said it before, but at the risk of becoming a creature of repetitive redundancy, I'll say it again. The only safe computer is one that is not powered on, is not connected to any network, is encased in a lead lined concrete box at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. Even that may be doubtful.

[oldgeek]

I rather like the Opera Browser, but generally use Firefox out of habit. I'm going to China late September, so I'll make sure to let them know that I won't stand for any account hacking!