Is this limited to Opera and China ?

This kind of reasoning also applies to facebook, any alphabet or google product/service, apple, uber, airbnb, and pretty much any company/service that's based in the US where the patriot act pretty much makes all these companies open bar for the US government.

Except that if you're an American, chances of Chinese government being able to affect you are tiny. Chances of NSA/Homeland Security/FBI tagging you as a "suspicious person - potential terrorist" and making your travel a living hell due to your Chrome history is significantly higher.

For me, no. Fuck all of them.

I particularly hate Facebook though, for turning most everyone around me into US informants.

If I see the opportunity to contribute to their obsoletion I'll dedicate years of my life to that.

> If I see the opportunity to contribute to their obsoletion I'll dedicate years of my life to that.

Here you go: https://www.bountysource.com/teams/diaspora

You might find Urbit of interest, if you haven't looked into it before now.

The jargon grinds on me, but it does look interesting. I added to my interesting decentralized/federated protocols collection.

There's also this recent piece [1], which was lost behind the Medium paywall until republished (apparently just today?) on urbit.org. It's a very solid introduction to the platform, its intent, and the reasoning which underlies it, and it's refreshingly free of jargon. If you're looking for something to whet your curiosity, I can unreservedly recommend it.

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/cpy5vt4zfuwgzax/the%20not%20so%20d...

There is a difference between the engine I use to access a large variety of websites, and a single website/service.

I'm confused. Is "the engine you use to access a large variety of websites" Opera, or Google the search engine? If it's Opera, Chrome then is no better (and arguably Gmail holds the keys to your kingdom anyway). If it's Google, Chrome is no better, and Gmail holds the keys to your kingdom anyway.

More generally, I don't see how China having your browsing history is worse than the US having your browsing history and your authentication attempts and all your contacts and just everything, completely everything.

> Opera, or Google the search engine? If it's Opera, Chrome then is no better (and arguably Gmail holds the keys to your kingdom anyway)

True, if I used Google, or their products.

But, I use Mozilla, who are publicly auditable, and an email provider that is not located in the US.

The majority of visits to websites have no search engine interaction, but those that do, make use of DuckDuckGo and the like.

> More generally, I don't see how China having your browsing history is worse than the US having your browsing history and your authentication attempts and all your contacts and just everything, completely everything.

Bringing up the US here, isn't entirely relevant. We're speaking about China, who have demonstrated some interesting ethics around people who are non-Chinese over the past few decades. Yes, the US is of concern, but that doesn't mean that China isn't one.

Secondly, your browser doesn't just have your history. It also has your authentication attempts, because it makes them. It also controls what certificates you use, and can trivially be used to MITM every authentication you make, unless pinning or other not-well-adopted practices are used. Which can give them everything.

... and even pinning won't save you unless you use a tool to monitor your connections and confirm you actually are using the cert your browser is saying you're using.

I'm not entirely sure it's possible to build such a tool.

Facebook and Google track you all over the web.

I'd say they attempt to track you by having various mechanisms to do so. This distinction is important as to no make this tracking appears imevitable.

you can take measures to prevent them from tracking you, a simple and quite effective one is to disable scripting and use a properly set up blocker such as ublock origin.

The EULA does specifically say that the contract is based on Norweigan law, for what it's worth:

> 12. THIS CONTRACT IS BASED ON NORWEGIAN LAW. This EULA will be governed by the laws of Norway without giving effect to any conflicts of law principles that may require the application of the laws of a different country.

Other potentially interesting terms -- "components" from "third parties" may be delivered along with Opera. Operate claims they're not responsible for that software, despite making the choice to deliver it to you:

> 5. COMPONENTS FROM THIRD PARTIES MAY BE DELIVERED ALONG WITH THE SOFTWARE. The Software is delivered along with certain software components provide by third parties (“Third Party Software”). Opera shall not be responsible for any such Third-Party Software.

Opera may come with "additional services", including one that routes your browser traffic through an Opera proxy:

> 6. THE SOFTWARE MAY INCLUDE ADDITIONAL OPERA SERVICES. Various additional Opera services may be offered where available via or as integrated into the Software (“Services”). These Services may include one or more of the following:

> ii. Compression: The Software includes compression functionality to enable users to boost the download of web content such as webpages and/or videos. This functionality requests web content through Opera’s proxy or compression servers. Your browsing experience may change due to increased loading speeds.

This last clause seems to allow Opera to route your web traffic through their servers, where they presumably have the technical ability to examine, record, and modify it. It's not clear to me if the EULA places any restrictions on how they may interact with this traffic, to record it, examine it, etc.

Others of these "additional services" are described as "optional", whereas the compression service is not:

> v. Contextual Hints: The Software may include “Browser Assistant”, a component that provides contextual hints about certain Opera browser features and other useful information which you might be interested in. Browser Assistant is an optional component of the Software.

Though, to be fair: the third-party reference may be referring to open source software (but doesn't appear limited to that); and Opera's compression service is similar to features offered by other browsers like Google Chrome.

The company bought opera is the one with a bad reputation in the field of user privacy. Qihoo is the one which provides a software_you_dont_need installation gateway which covered by a free anti-virus mask. LOL

>It's that the Chinese government have ways of getting into even resisting companies at their whim that are judged alright in completely different ways than in Norwegian law.

So, just like the US government?

I'd say yes, but I also think it's a pointless question.

Do these tangents on "the US bad too" and "no China worse" bore anyone else?

No, it is not pointless. Don't recall ever seeing the top-voted comment in a Google / Facebook product related post that a person will not use it because of US government surveillance. If the perception is that both governments are bad were true, then we would seeing much more of them. Someone has also (correctly) pointed out in the same thread that being tracked by the US government is significantly higher risk than the Chinese.

Let's say, worst-case scenario and this consortium of companies is heavily linked to the Chinese govt. So what? Why would a foreign govt care about me, a citizen in a Western country? For what purpose (other than to maybe sell me stuff)?

It's for this reason I have considered using a Chinese/Russian email service rather than Gmail, at least there is a chance they won't cooperate with the local authorities if they ever want to clamp down on my ass for some reaosn.

Do you own a business? Perhaps have some closed source software product? Many state actors would happily lift it from your inbox and pass it to some local startups.

I think most people who either own or work at businesses hopefully would be smart/careful enough to not take this risk (for business purposes I personally would only use open-source software whenever possible, and at least try and encrypt sensitive emails or just use something with E2E like Whatsapp), but people using internet/email for non-commercial purposes (i.e. the majority of users) would probably not care what state actors did.

Might be a bit far-fetched, but an organisation that wanted Chinese companies to ultimately succeed might take and use information you are privy to at a medium to large, competing American (for example) company.

You? Maybe not, I don't know much about you. But I would think out of a few million US users, they're able to turn up some useful tidbits.

Particularly as people use this to browse private repositories, corporate intranets, etc.

they are more likely steal your credit card data and vacuum your bank account due to insecurity of Chinese or Russian apps compared to western apps