Congratulations on ruining Opera VPN
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A Former User last edited by
Today I was FORCED to upgrade to the latest version of Opera in order to continue to use te VPN, I had stayed with the previous version (requiring locking down auto update in about 12 different places) because the awful Opera UI change made it unusable (I have accessibility sight issues that are not resolved by OS). Whilst I am glad to see that the AWFUL Win10 clone colour is gone the icons on the toolbar are still really hard to see, these ultra thin lines in the icons make it really hard for me.
However, what is a BIGGER problem, not just for me but for ALL Opera users, is the changes to the VPN. Sometimes I see changes in computing that are so damn stupid I wonder "which bright spark (idiot) is responsible for this" because they make something NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE.
So first of, why does anyone want a VPN? The biggest reason is surely PRIVACY, however, the powers that be do not want us to have privacy, so they block and frustrate our use of privacy tools.
So there are four fundamental schoolboy errors in the new VPN
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VPN Location options
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IP Addresses
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Naming Opera as the owner in search of IP
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Implementation Speed
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VPN Location options
Previously the choices were limited but we could choose between Countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, now we get to choose Europe and we get the damn Ukraine! Or if I choose Americas I would rather be able to choose WHERE than get Venezuela! -
IP Addresses
This has to be one of the daftest decisions I have seen in a LONG time, it was clearly made by someone who has no idea about VPN usage.
some VPN providers have 40,000 IP Addresses because if you are going to use a VPN you need to be hidden in plain site. Opera now appears to be using a dedicated IP subnet, so if anyone wants to frustrate Opera VPN users or even ban them, all they need to do it ban that subnet. How incredibly STUPID it was to make this change, I mean if you want to use privacy the last thing you want to do is advertise “I am using privacy measures so do not trust me”.
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Naming Opera as the owner in search of IP
If the IP issue was not dumb enough, putting the ownership of the IP address as Opera Software AS takes it to new levels of stupidity, not only do you make it easy to wipe out all your users in one go, you make it easy to identify them, how they are using privacy and what code could be used on their site to override the opera VPN. This would leave the user with a false sense of privacy. -
Implementation Speed
Finally comes the speed, no VPN is going to be as fast as a direct connection, but a quarter of the speed and a ping time of over 200ms !! It is just unusable.
It was the VPN that got me using Opera in the first place, particularly the ability to flip between different locations whilst in another country and to concurrently use another browser with the standard IP,
I work from different places around the world and the ability to choose the location of my VPN was critical to me. For example if I need to access company website services in Germany I could use Opera and select Germany, now I get offered Europe and it bloody gave me Ukraine which is NOT an EU country, is responsible for a huge amount of hacking so it often blacklisted and because it is not in the EU there are data protection issues about the handling of EU citizen data under data protection.
For me to be found to use Ukraine would be as foolish as Hilary Clinton using an unprotected server.
Finally, I do not know which bright spark chose this forum software, but the idea that I should have to enter data in a letterbox one line high and half a line across is AWFUL.
So I had to go to my word processor to write this message.
I expect that there will be the usual sycophants that think Opera can do no wrong and criticise me, but do not shoot the messenger. I will go back to Firefox and mention these issues on other forums in the hope that you get your act together.
It is hard enough to be successful with a browser without making foolish mistakes like the above.
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A Former User last edited by
@bronte said in Congratulations on ruining Opera VPN:
Finally, I do not know which bright spark chose this forum software, but the idea that I should have to enter data in a letterbox one line high and half a line across is AWFUL.
I agree. It is clear that Opera is trying to get as little response as possible.
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A Former User last edited by
@sgunhouse in order to change size I have to hit CTRL - to reduce size of text which makes site unsuble with my sight issues, honestly there is all that screen estate above and I am forced to use this stupid half letterbox.
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