It's not I have attempted to browse for a file to upload to virustotal.com

I want to know why, and how to stop these connections.
Unlike Chrome which opens many Explorer.exe connections, Opera only opens 1 so I salute the dev team for that but still:
[Explorer.EXE]
TCP 192.168.0.14:1248 c3:https ESTABLISHED

I know opera is the source because the connection does not appear unless Opera is launched.
Now there is a chance that malware could detect the launch of a browser and thus to disguise its connection the moment of opportunity. However, as you can see the IP address is home and not on the interweb, and there is no process other than Opera which shows an interweb IP address. So it would have to escape netstat detection. For that reason, I pretty sure it's Opera which is creating the connection. From my stand point, I see no reason for an Explorer.exe connection unless the user uses the browse file feature on a website.

So I ask again, Why does Opera prematurely open an Explorer.exe tcp connection?