No Opera #
Opera (GX/One/Crypto Browser) is a closed-source browser owned by a company with a track-record of selling user-data, censorship, backdoored software and involvement in predatory loans and anti-competitive behavior. While the link for this page is "OperaGX", this applies to every browser made by Opera browser as well.
If you have any corrections, questions, or new things you wanna add, hit my Discord (@overimagine) up.
- Opera was acquired by Chinese company Qihoo 360 for $300 million in 2016. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(company), https://www.engadget.com/2016-07-18-opera-browser-sold-to-a-chinese-consortium-for-600-million.html, https://www.google.com/search?&q=opera+sold+600+million)
- Their other browser, "360 Secure Browser" was released in 2008 and is very popular in China. It was exposed by a whistleblower in 2012 for having a backdoored DLL (ExtSmartwiz.d11) that regularly connects to external servers allowing it to remotely download an execute files. The whistleblower was verbally attacked by the company's Product Director. The situation eventually resulted in the app being temporarily pulled from the iOS App Store. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_Secure_Browser#Controversies)
- The same browser also manually blocked access to certain sites advocating for better workplace conditions in China. In one case, they redirected certain GitHub repositories to 404 pages making it appear as though they didn't exist. (https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/pull/24891, Translated Version)
- In 2017, Opera released 4 different predatory loan apps on the Play Store. These apps falsely advertised statistics on their store pages and invaded on user's privacy, sometimes directly sending threatening texts to the user's contacts if payments were late. All of these apps were in direct violation of Google's Terms of Service and have since been removed. (https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnaround/, https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/21/opera-predatory-loans/, https://www.ghacks.net/2020/01/19/what-is-going-on-at-opera-software/, https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predatory-loan-apps.html, https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/opera-defends-its-android-apps-after-accusation-of-predatory-lending/)
- All modern builds of Opera are forked from Chromium). While that isn't inherently a bad thing (Unless you're 100% anti-Google), it shows that most of the proclaimed performance benefits seem to be negligible. While the resource limiting features of Opera GX may slightly improve performance of other running applications, it only really serves to slow down whatever sites you have open by taking away needed resources.
- Opera makes 83 unsolicited requests on it's first run, along with other suspicious requests.
- Opera changes your default web browser while installing it with no obvious way of turning it off. (https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/j2j85x/decided_to_check_out_the_opera_browser_upon/)
- Opera's VPN provider, SurfEasy resells "anonymized usage data for market research" as it's primary revenue stream. (https://web.archive.org/web/20170518204556/http://coxit.net/opera/img/presentations/Chris-Houston_SurfEasy_CMD_2017.pdf, https://cybernews.com/best-vpn/opera-vpn-review/, https://restoreprivacy.com/vpn/reviews/opera-vpn/, https://www.top10vpn.com/guides/is-opera-vpn-safe/#is-opera-vpn-safe-to-use)
- Opera adds unsolicited websites to its "Speed Dial". Here and here.
- The Opera GX Twitter account is not your friend, social media managers have actual degrees and years put into study on what appeals people. (This isn't an excuse to harass or do some stupid shit like that to the Opera accounts and the people behind them, please don't harass them.)
- On November 28, 2023, Opera GX added a screamer when you start up the browser. While this seems innocent and yet another Opera GX gimmick on paper, it can very well scare people if they unknowingly have their volume on full blast, which is what a browser shouldn't even do to begin with. When confronted about it, they responded with "Chill brah it's only for one day", showing how they are unable to see the bigger picture.
- Most of Opera's other "exclusive Features" are subjectively and either very gimmicky, pointless, or have outright better alternatives. The features that are actually useful can easily be obtained on other browsers using much more trustworthy extensions. For example, their builtin ad-blocking can be replaced by uBlock Origin, and their VPN (Which by the way, only redirects traffic away from your ISP and to Opera themselves.) can be replaced by any number of more trusted VPN providers, like Mullvad or ProtonVPN (Not sponsored by any of these). An Opera GX theme is available for Firefox, though if you really want a Chromium based browser, Vivaldi is made by the former CEO of Opera. Many report it's a bit slow, but it's a pretty solid choice.
