[OU] Updating to 9.51 don't respect my preferences. RECTIFICATION > I was (part.) wrong!

Sat Aug 2 16:52:02 UTC 2008

Hi Andrew Gregory,
Thanks again to answer.

ISSUE 1: TO VE VERIFIED. The problem about opera not respecting my
previous preferences, when started via command line $ opera -pd
/pathtomyprevious9.27profilefolder(s) is a question to be re-tested with
some time.

ISSUE 2: I AM RIGHT.
The problem about Opera driving for you when updating to where they
likes (before your chance to verify/set-up your privacy/general
settings) to the logging Opera firstrun site, it's to be resolved by
Opera in a future, or it risk to be treated as fascist behavior.

You mention "what happens about this", it's not your matter where or not
I browse, It's my decision, not Opera ones.
Even if it is to a NON-privacy-logging-profiling innocent Opera welcome
site, clean httml with no plugins, cookies javascript or else (WHAT IT'S
NOT ANYWAY), again , it's not your matter where or not I (all users)
browse, It's my (all users) decision, not Opera one's.
It's a question of principles, you can be honest or not, but no ambiguous.

ISSUE 3: I WAS WRONG. I am ready to eat one of my socks, as promised.
(but .. read)

I have to RECTIFY myself about the Opera user-agent issue:
Sorry all you guys, sorry Andy.
IT WORKS as Opera announced. Opera is NOT DECEIVING users when setting
this option. (thanks Opera for my brand new blue Sportster
Harley-Davidson. hey Andy, yours is also blue? ... I am joking, promise!).
I am quite happy about this, it was a nightmare for me to think about
that Opera was betraying and faking users settings. I am supporting,
promoting and defending (even if you may think I'm not for my postings
here) Opera from a decade ago!

YES Opera 9.51 passed (twice some hours ago) OKAY the browser/OS
identification privacy tests from
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2
and from
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

.. although ONLY when user-agent network settings for a specific site
is set as browser identification = "mask as".

It is also successful masquerading the OS that is as important as to
masquerade the browser identification to reduce hackers attacks and
profiling.

I WAS WRONG on that, I don't know how it happened. Need quick holidays.
I was also playing with Opera 9.27 (this one I think it didn't offered
the "mask as" option) and with your ua.ini proposals from your blog
"Faking Browser IDs" http://scss.com.au/family/andrew/opera/browserids/
, and I make some testing mistake somewhere.

YOU WHERE RIGHT pointing that yes Opera was passing okay those tests
when the browser specific site identification setting is set "as mask".
Sorry.

I am ready to eat one of my socks pair as I promised.

BUT I will not eat my second socket, (yet) as Opera still fails
respecting users privacy rights, as it doesn't give the option to set
those masquerading browser identification settings as definitive
(WHY?*), as YES Firefox and some other browsers allows: THIS IS A MUST.

seen at
http://groups.google.com/group/opera.general/browse_thread/thread/4895e1f73da85140
, Jun 26 2007, Rijk (Opera Software, QA etc...) says:
> Rijk van Geijtenbeek wrote:
>> Complete masking is not available as a general ID setting, only in
the siteprefs. This was a design decision.
here some extra details:
http://groups.google.com/group/opera.general/browse_thread/thread/4895e1f73da85140

WHY?*)= because it's against Opera financial interests. Money matters,
user's privacy rights matters quite less or nothing.

And Opera MUST warn users that changing (site specific) browser
identifications (and other security/privacy tweakings) MUST BE DONE
BEFORE you browse to the site !!!!
(tools>preferences>advanced>content>manage-site-preferences).
If you are in Nepal and you browse to a dissident (chinese gov
surveilled) site , YOU ARE CAUGHT!. They will not give a chance to you
for a second set of browsing with your brand new privacy settings.
Even when you protect your IP (via tor or other anonymizer network), you
turn off plugins, java, javascript, cookies, they can traceroute to you
thanks to the browser/os identifications you leave on your browsing (if
not properly masqueraded), used in combination of time-stamping and
other techniques, if not now, probably after some surveillance time.

THE mouse's right button menu and
tools>quickpreferences>edit-site-preferences are silly shortcuts that
can cause a fake feeling of privacy/security.
USERS MUST SETUP THEIR SITE SPECIFIC privacy/security settings before
browsing the site, not after.
And as these are on Opera blank boxes settings menus, Opera must shown
the proper syntax to avoid errors, (e.g
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/the-ongoing-revolution-in-nepal/ ,
www.rsf.org) , or how to allow both https and http versions of the site...
e.g. I tried and failed here to specify *, *.*, *.cn, and similar
entries to the url
tools>preferences>advanced>content>manage-site-preferences box, and
failed without warnings.

.. AND AGAIN this is a FAKE SECURITY/PRIVACY TWEAK:
Most sites that are going to profile you contents hidden links (as https
mostly) that goes to the profiling site, at a totally different (hidden,
you can't pre-edit a specific privacy/security custom site-preferences
here) domain site than you are going to browse.

SO AGAIN, these masquerading browse and OS identification, today timidly
offered by Opera as an only-per-site setting option, MUST BE settable as
a GLOBAL OPTION, as FIREFOX AND OTHERS does.

THIS DEFINITIVELY IS A MUST. If not, Opera will be very soon threated as
fascist and privacy non respectful, even at risk to be denounced by
privacy foundations and activists (as eff.org, etc) to the UN and local
governments.

Again, Opera dislikes this because they earn they money profiling on you
and using google adsense and/or similar affiliates programs to get their
(huge) income against your privacy rights.
This kind of business model MUST END soon or later, its against human
privacy rights, that are far go ahead and most important than any money
Opera or others can earn.

Andrew, you said:
> Opera also "phones home" to check for
> updates and compatibility improvements. This is a non-issue.

WHAT the hell!. YES it is an YES-issue, NOBODY CAN CALL HOME WITHOUT
USERS PERMISSIONS, this is a so hated backdoor, calling "home" where
opera likes and where it can know about you as m much as they can.
At least Opera may ask users if they want to enable this, as Firefox or
others.

Hi Andrew Gregory, googling a bit I found you have worked a lot about
browsers tech, you edit several blogs and sites about that. Thanks to
keep us informed, hopely my protests here (even if I was partially wrong
on some of my arguments) may influence on you a bit to become a better
bastion for human privacy rights defense and for better privacy/security
focused browsers. You are much better positioned and respected to
influence browsers software corporations as Opera than we mere mortals.

But you look here more as an Opera/Google/BigMoney staff than an users
rights defender ...

Have fair holidays!

Mac

END.

Andrew Gregory wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 18:43:48 +0800, macintoshzoom
> <macintoshzoom at lavabit.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Andrew Gregory? or HTH?,
> 
> HTH = Hope This Helps
> 
>> Are you from the Opera staff?
> 
> No.
> 
>> Thanks for answering.
> 
> Hmmm. That's a contrast to the rest of your message!
> 
>> Andrew Gregory wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:14:06 +0800, macintoshzoom
>>> <macintoshzoom at lavabit.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> SUMMARY REPORT:
>>>> ISSUE 1: Updating to 9.51 don't respect previous preferences settings.
>>>
>>> We'll need a lot more details than that! Anything will be better than
>>> zero. I don't recall any of my preferences being altered by an upgrade.
>>
>> Well it happened to me.
>> You may tell me a lier.
>> Have any of you guys experienced this issue? Please post.
> 
> Nobody has called you a liar. All I said was that I've never lost my
> preferences after an upgrade.
> 
> What it sounds like is that Opera has lost track of your original
> profile and created a new one for you. This most often occurs when doing
> a multi-user install over a single-user install, or vice versa.
> 
> I'm not overly familar with all the technicalities of profiles, but this
> page may help:
> 
> http://operawiki.info/OperaProfiles
> 
>>>> ISSUE 2: Updating to 9.51 forces you to start at a preset "opera
>>>> 9.51welcome/firstrun" site.
>>>
>>> This has happened for every update install for as long as I can
>>> remember. Happens with every other browser I've updated too. Often
>>> happens when I update some software packages. Just close the tab when it
>>> opens. It won't come back. Not until your next update, anyway.
>>
>> Yes, these are bad manners from most browser creators from long time
>> ago, but it don't justify bad manners.
>> You force people to browse where they didn't ask to go for, and to leave
>> their fingerprints and logging to your site, without user permission.
> 
> Seriously - you don't in general have complete control over what
> communications the browser makes. Unless you set all your web comms to
> go through a firewall or proxy. 

Opera also "phones home" to check for
> updates and compatibility improvements. This is a non-issue. 
You've
> already visited Opera to download the app. What's the problem if Opera
> knows you've actually installed it?

> 
>>>> ISSUE 3: Preferences setting identify as and mask as a different
>>>> browserDON'T WORK. These are faking preferences to deceive users.
>>>
>>> Those preferences work fine.
>>
>> Not, you are wrong, Those preferences DON'T work fine.
>>
>> You are lying or deceiving all opera users intentionally:
> 
> Hmmm. Since you're quick to accuse people of lying to you, I guess you
> accusing others of lying to you is par for the course. It's just a shame
> that neither has been the case! :(
> 
>> Test your browser at the sites that I specified in my post , and that
>> you deliberately have not shown here (WHEN YOU SPEAK ABOUT WHAT OTHERS
>> SAID, ALWAYS INCLUDE THEIR FULL TEXT, not what you like others hear
>> about them):
>>
>> From my original post:
>> Test sites to verify this user-agent/settings ISSUE:
>> https://www.jondos.de/en/anontest
>> https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 (shieldup>browser headings)
>>
>> Do you home job, and tell me and tell all in this list that those tests
>> doesn't shows Opera 9.51 and your OS in their user-agent results.
> 
> If I mask as Firefox or IE, there's no sign of Opera on those pages.
> Masking the user-agent does not hide your operating system, and has
> never claimed to!
> 
> The settings are working exactly as intended. You'll need to be more
> specific about what you expect.
> 
> If you want to totally hide your user-agent and operating system, you'll
> need to use a proxy that can modify the requests you send out.
> 
>> Note that I started a post some weeks ago asking for "How to anonymize
>> Opera?", with no real success yet for a real answer: "How to anonymize
>> Opera?". Nobody could be able to give me the answer.
> 
> Well, if you were running on Windows, I'd recommend OperaTor (note that
> I haven't actually used it, but plenty of people seem to like it):
> 
> http://archetwist.com/en/opera/operator
> 
> I don't use Linux in other than a server capacity, so I can't advise
> there. Nor can I give advice on other operating systems, such as MacOS.
> 
>> Note: Here is a copy of my complete posting thread, for proper reference
>> to all readers, as Andrew Gregory published above a partial/censored one:
> 
> There's absolutely no need for that. Subscribers to the mailing list
> will already have a copy of your original, plus there's the copy in the
> mailing list archives if they've already deleted their copy.
> 
> https://list.opera.com/mailman/listinfo/opera-users
> 
> Not trimming emails is simply being rude and inconsiderate of those
> people on dial-up or who otherwise pay per-byte for their Internet
> connection, but given the tone of your emails so far, I'm guessing
> there's only one person around here you care about! :(
> 
> Hoo boy! Am I glad I'm going for a two-week holiday!
> 
> HTH,