Opera is Spyware!?

The Inquirer ^ | 21 April 2003 | Andrew Busigin

[sharktrager]

When you set-up Windows on your system it takes your location information, which is stored on your system.

[ShadowAce]

Tech Ping. Time to get Mozilla.

[John Beresford Tipton]

I've used Opera for several years and never had such a problem.

[NativeNewYorker]

I'm a big Opera fan, and appreciated all this info.

I've recently started migrating to Phoenix/Firebird, the Mozilla-lite browser.

http://texturizer.net/firebird/download.html

[k2blader]

Hmmm. Bump to send to a friend.

[KarlInOhio]

Mark for later reading

[John Beresford Tipton]

"the banner ads started getting personal, or at least - local, advertising businesses very close by"

Probably after the author was searching for "nudie bars near shady pines"

[ShadowAce]

Notice he mentioned specifically ver. 7.03

Earlier versions may not have this in there. Heck 7.03 may not be spyware--he seems to be reporting possibilities, rather than facts, but it seems rather damning.

I'm willing to give Opera the benefit of the doubt at this point.

[philetus]

I, personally, think when we set uo windows, no matter what type, we are being spied on.

[Proud_texan]

The Opera folks categorically deny this in multiple statements.

http://my.opera.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=118262#post118262 for one.

Full disclaimer; I've worked with several people at Opera, not for pay, but just because I like the program and my take is that they are highly ethical and competent and they have never even slighly misrepresented anything to me.

I hold them in the highest regard.

[ShadowAce]

Agreed. See my post #10. I thought, though, it would be best if people knew the possibility.

[steve86]

I run Phoenix nightly builds as well as Opera on Linux but have been confused about the name "Firebird" which has been popping up. I guess this message on the Firebird site clarifies it...

New Name: Firebird

After months of discussion and further months of legal investigation, we're finally comfortable moving forward with new names. The new name for the Phoenix browser is "Firebird". The documentation and product strings will be updated soon. In addition to securing Firebird, we've also got the OK from those contributing legal resources to use the name "Thunderbird" for a mail client. Hopefully this will be the end of naming legal issues for a while.

Phoenix News Posted by Asa Dotzler | 2003-04-15

[js1138]

If you have a firewall you can set it to notify you of outgoing requests.

[justlurking]

When you set-up Windows on your system it takes your location information, which is stored on your system.

Only for the time-zone. The WIndows XP activation process requires name and address, but that's still not what is happening.

Lo and behold, without entering any voluntary location data, and always entering such info in a dodgy fashion when it was a "required field", the banner ads started getting personal, or at least - local, advertising businesses very close by.

Many IP addresses can be located to a geographical area:

http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm

It identified mine to the correct city. Your mileage may vary.

[NativeNewYorker]

Yeah. There were copyright issues with the old name, so they re-branded the browser/mail client.

[Xenalyte]

Hey, dude, like, ping or something!

[Proud_texan]

Sorry if it seemed I was shooting the messenger, such was not my intent.

[mhking]

Go with Phoenix (soon to be called Firebird in its next incarnation); at version 0.5 (and I don't know how many daily releases), by 0.7 or so, it will become the default Mozilla browser. It's less kludgy than Mozilla, and does not have mail integrated to slow it down.

If you find you DO need mail, while I have yet to test it, Mozilla's stand-alone mail program, Thunderbird, also stripped out of the Mozilla interface, has won raves from folks who find it faster and less bloated than it's integrated counterpart.

Mozilla is a decent alternative, but it's size can be unwieldy. Once version 1.4 goes final (sometime this summer at the present development rate), all development will shift over to Phoenix/Firebird & Thunderbird.

If you're on a Mac, Mozilla's Camino ties their capabilities directly into the Jaguar interface.