Opera now has a free and unlimited built-in VPN

[bill]

http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/04/free-vpn-integrated-opera-for-windows-mac/ [opera.com]

Free VPN integrated in Opera for better online privacy

We are the first major browser maker to integrate an unlimited and free VPN or virtual private network. Now, you don’t have to download VPN extensions or pay for VPN subscriptions to access blocked websites and to shield your browsing when on public Wi-Fi.

The Opera 38 developer version now includes this free VPN feature. Currently you can only choose virtual locations in the US, Canada and Germany, but they say more are on the way.

[ronin]

Well done Opera.

Let's hope Firefox and Vivaldi follow suit.

[henry0]

On wins 10, I have a problem!
Tried to install it, something went wrong (said the installer!), although it works (don't know why?)
I wanted to uninstall, No Way, always quit before done.
Tried manually, but I don't get it, in Regedit search I do not find any specific to Opera.
Asides my machine has no problem, but this bugs me.
Anyone has similar problems?
Any clue?
thanks

[mrki]

Yes henry0, I have similar problem. After installation on Win10ent it look fine, but now crashes. I will try to to something and if help, I'll be back ;-)

[blend27]

I had the latest Opera Dev Ed and used it as a backup browser to test things out. Went to Settings enabled VPN, checked a few sites, YES, VPN Worked!

This is on Win7/64Bit.

3 minutes later needed to restart the browser, now it crashes at 100% rate.

[Securex]

Opera VPN is not a good solution.

Some facts:
On 10 February 2016, a group of Chinese investors offered $1.2 billion to buy the company:
Opera's business model is as an ad network.
Opera is an ad network unto themselves and collects your usage data for those purposes.
Opera and third-parties, including Google, use first-party cookies and third-party cookies together to a) inform, optimize, and serve ads
Opera uses Facebook Custom Audience on Opera’s web Opera and Facebook uses cookies, web beacons or similar technologies to collect or receive information from your visit to Opera’s website with the purpose to provide measurement and target ads on Facebook.
Opera purchased SurfEasy VPN just over a year ago:
SurfEasy is a VPN company located in Canada (a five eyes country)
They keep bandwidth and usage logs. These are temporary, but they're still logs.

You can read this:
[reddit.com...]

[engine]

If you're using a VPN provided by Opera it's likely not to be private, just as any such system. However, for the casual user, it's a step up from what you have right now. Just remember that the VPNs will gain all the tracking information, and less so on the site being browsed.

[Securex]

Ok. Now it's a reason to DO NOT use opera VPN.

[makeonlineshop]

This browser is so good, but how can they fail marketing so much ?

[bill]

Turns out that this is not actually a VPN. It's more like a proxy. However, it's not really a proxy either. It seems to be something between a VPN and a proxy if I understand what they're doing. It sounds like they're expanding on the proxy service that they've offered for years to speed up your browsing.

Ok. Now it's a reason to DO NOT use opera VPN.

I don't see that you've offered any clear reason why this should be avoided. Nobody was suggesting that we use this feature for secure privacy. If you want that there are better solutions. As a feature built into a browser this is an interesting development, and Opera is one of the first to do this.

This browser is so good, but how can they fail marketing so much ?

How is this a marketing failure? They announced a feature that is being tested out in the development branch of their browser, and now the tech press and forums like this are discussing them. That hardly seems to be a marketing failure...

[Brett_Tabke]

And now super cool that it is available for Android.
[lifehacker.com...]

[makeonlineshop]

@bill

Really so difficult to understand that a good browser that nobody uses can only let me think about failure ?

[engine]

Here's the link to Opera's announcement, "Opera News
Free VPN for Android without data limits: Opera VPN " [opera.com...]

It's worth reading to understand exactly what it means.

[bill]

It looks like they're targeting the consumer market rather than the enterprise market with this move. It's an interesting differentiator for their product as long as users don't conflate the VPN offered as a real VPN and assume that it does anything more than speed up web traffic for their mobile browser. A real VPN would funnel all of the device traffic through the VPN tunnel.

[keyplyr]

I've been using it on my Android phone.

Still using my default Chrome browser. Speeds up web surfing a bit, but I already had a very fast WiFi connection.

The VPN tunnel is through surfeasy.com (owned by Opera) with over 1k server addresses worldwide.

I liked the security & tracking blocker, but ended up uninstalling because each time I launched the browser, it gave me a new IP address from various countries which played havoc with Bing Rewards which is limited to the US.

[keyplyr]

Looking further, I now think the tracking blocker is what is interfering with Bing's accounting and not the IP address since I'm able to choose country.