When the Opera browser with enabled VPN loads a page, it sends many requests to with a Proxy-Authorization request header.ĬC68FE24C34B5B2414FB1DC116342EADA7D5C46B:9B9BE3FAE67ĤA33D1820315F4CC94372926C8210B6AEC0B662EC7CAD611D86A3 It’s an HTTP/S proxy that requires authentication. The browser then talks to a proxy like, and its IP address can only be resolved from within Opera when the VPN feature is turned on. Once the user enables the feature in settings, Opera VPN sends API requests to to obtain credentials and proxy IPs. This might be used for user tracking for whatever purpose,” Špaček added. “There’s also a potential privacy issue: when setting up the VPN, the browser requests something called device_id, this is subsequently sent in every request to the proxy and it survives browser restarts and reinstalls unless you also delete your user data when uninstalling. Other tools you use, including for example email clients like Outlook, won’t use this ‘VPN’,” Špaček told Help Net Security. 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. Yesterday, Opera announced they’ve added a free VPN client with unlimited data usage in the latest developer version of their browser.
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