Is Opera sending information to Opera server everytime you hit enter?

[kartal]

I am using peerguardian2 beside my firewall for blocking and tracking. One thing I see in peerguardian window is that everytime I hit enter there is n port 80 connection to opera owned ip adress which is
http://213.236.208.60/ . This may sound paranoid but this does not sound right to me. Can anyone else confirm this? This is pretty much active tracking and I have no idea about the content of the packets.
Why would Opera send http request to opera servers everytime I hit enter. This is not an update check.



http://whois.domaint...s.com/213.236.208.60

[jgpaiva]

That's pretty simple
It's to prevent phishing. Everytime you open a site, opera sends the url to the opera servers, and if that site is reported in phishtank, opera displays a warning.

I believe that behaviour can be configured, but I can't remember where.

[Lashiec]

Yes, Opera is tracking every movement you do on the Intertubes, and selling that information to the highest bidder (which usually is Google)

For more details, refer to the documentation (including how to disable it).

[kartal]

Actually I do not find it funny that this behaviour is enabled by default to be honest. Just because of this particular behaviour I will no longer use Opera. I can take care of my own security I do not need addtional tracking to ensure my own security really.

Also http://www.opera.com...ocs/fraudprotection/  cannot pass my proxy security standards(blocked by peerguardian), I have no reason to rely on their unsecure fraudprotection help page

[jgpaiva]

Actually, both ie and firefox have phishing protection, but firefox downloads a file with banned sites (every 30 minutes). IMO, that's a better way to do it, but I sure wouldn't stop using opera for this reason

[kartal]

Well, I am not looking for evil intentions here, but this kind of particular overlooking cannot be disregarded as just plain lazyness. Some people like to think that if someone is worried about privacy, he/she is going nuts, worrying about corporations, goverments are following him/her day and night. NO the issue is none of this. The main issue is that noone has any right or business to follow or track what I do until I let them to. This is not a paranoia, this is search for rights. Now those who like to ridicule these important issues are just shooting themselves in the foot by helping those sloppy lazzy or evil companies, call hem whatever you like.

Now Opera is helping you by serving phishing data but in return they are logging every url you click on. How come this is just a simple feature enabling or disabling issue?  This is an important thing that should not be enabled by default and they should mention it to the user spesifically during the install. It would be amazingly dumb if they have never thought about this flaw while implementing the feature.

[jgpaiva]

Actually, IIRC, opera only sends hashes of the URL.
And if that hash is a match for the hashes of phishing URLs, the browser is notified.
Thus, they can't really see which sites you're visiting, unless they are on their database.

[Lashiec]

Well, I am not looking for evil intentions here, but this kind of particular overlooking cannot be disregarded as just plain lazyness. Some people like to think that if someone is worried about privacy, he/she is going nuts, worrying about corporations, goverments are following him/her day and night. NO the issue is none of this. The main issue is that noone has any right or business to follow or track what I do until I let them to. This is not a paranoia, this is search for rights. Now those who like to ridicule these important issues are just shooting themselves in the foot by helping those sloppy lazzy or evil companies, call hem whatever you like.

Now Opera is helping you by serving phishing data but in return they are logging every url you click on. How come this is just a simple feature enabling or disabling issue?  This is an important thing that should not be enabled by default and they should mention it to the user spesifically during the install. It would be amazingly dumb if they have never thought about this flaw while implementing the feature.

-kartal (September 15, 2008, 11:12 AM)

No one is following or tracking you by using Opera's fraud protection. While it's true that perhaps it should not be enabled by default (it wasn't in versions pre-9.5), the thing is that you have more to lose by disabling than by not disabling it (actually, in this case the only thing you're losing are a few KB or less per site check). Read the link I provided above more carefully, particularly the section "Opera's approach: the fraud protection server".