Well, that's certainly my definition of customer service! Can you at least confirm that Opera Norway is aware of this thread? If they aren't interested in 1) reaching out to CDN's like Akamai and Cloudflare to explain the situation and pass this information along privately, 2) publishing it publicly, or 3) altering Mini on the back-end to hide the Netherlands IP ranges in favor of the user-local IP, then they are apparently satisfied in offering a mediocre product.

I will continue to post blocked web sites to this thread and encourage others to do so, too. Maybe when we reach 1000+ sites, Opera will finally take notice that something is wrong?

My goal in posting here was to find a way to make Mini more usable on these fussy sites...without disabling the features that keep me using Mini in the first place. All this time I'd assumed the 82.145.212.x and 82.145.211.x ranges I cited above were the backend servers powering Mini, not the (apparently well-known) filtering proxy Opera uses across a range of products. I was going to ask you to confirm my comment that

I was under the strong impression that Mini was incapable of processing .html, .js, .css, etc. files on its own.

But I found the Mini developer's guide at https://dev.opera.com/articles/opera-mini-content-authoring-guidelines/ so that's no longer important:

Third, there are browsers that use a proxy system to deliver content to the phone. In this setup, there is a client on the device that connects to a proprietary server, which then connects to the wider web for page requests, does some server-side processing and sends content back the client. Opera Mini falls into this category: when the user navigates to a new page, the server fetches the page and transforms it into a lightweight compressed binary markup language called OBML. This decreases bandwidth usage by up to 90% and saves CPU usage on mobile devices, and as such makes browsing on resource-restricted devices much more viable. It also has speed benefits, since the majority of data transfer occurs between the Mini servers and website servers, both of which are on high-speed connections.

Point of logic then. As Opera has apparently gone to great lengths to hide the IP address ranges of the actual, central servers, showing the world a user-local IP when Data Saving is disabled, it should be possible to hide the proxy server address, too. (Mini can't be making TWO outbound connections, can it?) Yes, it's probably easier to treat all Opera clients the same, but they've already shown this can be done. Hide the proxy's existence behind a user-local IP and that would be a win for users.

Comments?

OfA has data savings too. And adblcoker.

Obviously you were suggesting I change Data Savings to Off. Tap, tap, tap...

Okay, that was unexpected. The vast majority of sites I listed now don't complain, perhaps because my IP now shows as US-based. What exactly is happening here? Given the vast difference in package sizes, this can't simply be turning Mini into "Opera for Android"? I was under the strong impression that Mini was incapable of processing .html, .js, .css, etc. files on its own.

Having said that, the Data Saving feature is the main reason I use Mini, and I refuse to use any browser today without ad blocking. To give these up means I may as well move to Firefox with uBlock Origin full time. But this is could be a way to decide if the web site is causing problems because of the foreign IP or because of Mini itself, so I am happy to know this trick.

@h1andy It could be due to the location or just because the site blocks VPNs and proxies.

If you can show me how to turn off the Mini VPN/proxy, then I'll be on my way. As we know that's impossible, I take it as the CDN (etc.) being sloppy. They get held to a higher standard because it's their day job. Now if knowing how Mini works, a web site still decides to block it for geographic reasons, I'm okay with that...provided they have the decency to say so. Very few do. One such site is tcm.com

@tao102 I was thinking more of security and privacy when I said that Opera will not publish the list of Opera Mini servers IP addresses.

But at best, that's security through obscurity. At worst it's meaningless because I was able to deduce a rough IP range on my own with just a few minutes of work. A dedicated attacker would be much more spot on.

It's very easy to find sites that don't work. (I define that as visiting a site in Mini and experiencing some kind of hassle...up to being blocked entirely, then immediately trying Firefox, Chrome, etc. and experiencing no hassle.) Just do a web search for something (where the results are more varied than 100 Amazon links) and start clicking. I was looking for a small car part tonight and more sites failed than worked. One of the sites that worked got my business. Some examples, in no particular order:

deviantart.com
homedepot.com
stockwiseauto.com
partsgeek.com
indeed.com (intermittent)
farmstore.com
kickstarter.com (intermittent)
ziprecruiter.com
repairclinic.com
locations.monro,com
thebritishcrafthouse.co.uk
commercialsearch.com
klockit.com
blindstogo.com
commercialcafe.com
overdriveonline.com
unmask.com
fastpeoplesearch.com
bjs.com
dollargeneral.com
flowershopping.com
camelcamelcamel.com
warshows.com
parcelmonkey.com
weismarkets.com
rd.com

I noticed some sites that fail when clicking a search engine link, but work when accessed directly. Those are not included. Hopefully they're just misconfigured and will be fixed shortly.

There are at least as many other examples trapped on another currently non-functioning Android phone.

Incidentally, I found a handful of sites in my Opera Mini "log" that are pricks to many visitors, not just Mini:

ezydvd.com.au
homeboxstores.com
cof.co.il
answerpail.com
flamesmedia.ca
odeon.co.uk

As long as everybody suffers, I'm somewhat more tolerant of that.

Being a moderator here, if I can convince you there is a problem, can you help me get Opera off their backsides?

At least sniffies.com (NSFW) blocks opera proxy but not any above servers.

Opera doesn't seem to be a very hands-on company anymore, so you may be right...but my request is quite legitimate, and I hope for the better angels of their nature. They should consider it an extension of their developer's kit. It would be sad if I had to reach out to Akamai personally on their (and my) behalf.

I've been taking screen shot every time a site block Mini (or seems to treat it differently), and can start uploading them here if that's needed to drive the point home. This is not an isolated problem, and I can't believe others around the world aren't affected as well.