Opera just added a free VPN to its browser for anonymous internet access

magenta_placenta · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

birjolaxew · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

The big question for me is, how do they pay for it? Running a VPN network capable of supporting the entire Opera userbase certainly isn’t free.

midasgoldentouch · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

I always loved Opera. It’s just not that big here in the US though, and so developers just didn’t really take the time to make sure everything worked right in it.

MaRmARk0 · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

It’s not VPN

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/spaze/558b7c4cd81afa7c857381254ae7bd10

opera-vpn.md

### 2023 update
ℹ️ **Please note this research is from 2016 when Opera has first added their browser "VPN", even before the "Chinese deal" was closed. They have since introduced some real VPN apps but this below is not about them.**

🕵️ **Some folks also like to use this article to show a proof that the Opera browser is a _spyware_ or that Opera sells all your data to _3rd parties_ or something like that. This article here doesn't say anything like that.**

---

When setting up (that's immediately when user enables it in settings) Opera VPN sends few API requests to https://api.surfeasy.com to obtain credentials and proxy IPs, see below, also see [The Oprah Proxy](https://github.com/spaze/oprah-proxy).

The browser then talks to a proxy `de0.opera-proxy.net` (when VPN location is set to Germany), it's IP address can only be resolved from within Opera when VPN is on, it's `185.108.219.42` (or similar, see below). It's an HTTP/S proxy which requires auth.

This file has been truncated. show original

pretty-1-register_subscriber.json

POST /v2/register_subscriber HTTP/1.1
Host: api.surfeasy.com
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 114
Accept: application/json
SE-Client-Type: se0304
SE-Client-API-Key: 3690AC1CE5B39E6DC67D9C2B46D3C79923C43F05527D4FFADCC860740E9E2B25
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2687.0 Safari/537.36 OPR/38.0.2205.0 (Edition developer)
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, lzma

This file has been truncated. show original

pretty-2-register_device.json

POST /v2/register_device HTTP/1.1
Host: api.surfeasy.com
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 104
Accept: application/json
SE-Client-Type: se0304
SE-Client-API-Key: 3690AC1CE5B39E6DC67D9C2B46D3C79923C43F05527D4FFADCC860740E9E2B25
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2687.0 Safari/537.36 OPR/38.0.2205.0 (Edition developer)
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, lzma

This file has been truncated. show original

There are more than three files. show original

paint-by-numbers · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Opera’s new baked in VPN is NOT a good solution for your privacy! crosspost from /r/privactytoolsio

capSAR273 · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

deer oil start future payment badge gray rude ludicrous act

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

NeoHenderson · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

What else is necessary to be anonymous online?

Anonymous · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Very cool, unfortunately in my case enabling the VPN causes the browser to crash every time it’s launched, rendering it unusable. I look forward to a more stable version.

eNaRDe · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

So does this mean Netflix wont work on it?

Anonymous · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Downloaded last night. The dev tools seem to be identical to chrome. I’m gunna give it a go as my dev browser.

xaoschao · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Has anyone used this yet? I can only find it on the dev browser, there’s only a 7 day preview on the regular browser.

flipjargendy · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Closed source software that is “looking out for your privacy”… hmmm

Jason-Genova · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Opera has always been ahead of the curve and paved the way. They were the first to have tabs and numerous other features that other browsers copied.

Willy-FR · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

So, it’s basically useless for Netflix.

consoleisking · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Thought the title said Oprah. Confused.

vastico · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Not a problem with all of it’s 10 users :>

LandOfTheLostPass · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

Running a VPN network capable of supporting the entire Opera userbase certainly isn’t free.

I’m sure it’s pretty cheap to run it for both of them.

Anonymous · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

If you’re not paying for it, then you’re the product.

timmyblob · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

The VPN is operated by SurfEasy, Inc according to the fine print–an Opera company based in Canada.

I’d assume they get a little bit of income at least from Google searches from within the browser just like Firefox. They can probably pay for it with that?

derfarrodin · March 11, 2025, 2:15pm

But didn’t they have it anyway because opera mobile, which if i remember right downscales images and stuff.