@katyblessings I would stick with a name-brand, well-known free AV (Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, Kaspersky Mobile, Norton, Sophos, Trend Micro, etc) to minimize the potential for scams and malicious exploitation. You can use an online search engine to check user and trade-magazine reviews of these kinds of AVs. I'm not sure how many of these might also utilize some of the high-risk permissions noted in your research link, but at least the companies involved have fairly well-established reputations and are not likely to delve into 'scammy' kinds of activities.

Can you give more details of just how imeangame "loads itself" (every time Opera starts up, periodically "out of the blue", when you visit certain websites, etc)? Also, when it does appear, does it 'hijack' a desired page or open a new tab? If you examine your Opera extensions, are there any there which you don't recognize? Finally, does this only occur with the Opera browser (and not with a different browser)? Also, under Opera's Settings > Advanced > Privacy & Security, try checking the Browsing history, Download history, Cookies and other site data, Cached images and files, and Hosted app data boxes > Clear data.

Your Tab process seems a bit high for the Opera For Windows page; also, the GPU process task seems quite high for that same (static) page. Also, the hotjar.com subframe being present seems to be peculiar if your only open tab/page is the Opera Windows page. If you open Windows Task Manager, there have to be some other major process contributors running on your system and eating up RAM besides what is shown in Opera (which you show as roughly 800 Mb, whereas you have 8,000 Mb of RAM installed).

The "moment of truth" will probably start to appear in 2020 as manifest V3 goes "live" in Chrome generic distribution. Then we'll start to see whether/if the ripples spread into non-Chrome chromium (and thereafter potentially impact other chromium-based browsers).

Per https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/google-begins-testing-extension-manifest-v3-in-chrome-canary/ , 1 November 2019: "While they are now in preview, Google expects the manifest v3 to go live in 2020 with the v2 end of life to be determined in the future."

@paulrevere said in Turn off "Internet Access Blocked" Notification?:

@paulrevere - Solved? I turned off notifications in Windows Firewall. I'm not getting the subject notifications any more.

"Solved" perhaps, but: one downside of that disablement via Windows Firewall is that IF you install a new app/program that itself requires acceptance of incoming network/Internet connections, you will no longer be informed when the app tries to use network connections and requests such connection through the firewall. Windows Firewall blocks all apps from such access by default unless the apps/firewall are otherwise configured to allow it, during installation or otherwise and informs you accordingly. If you install a new app that requires network access , particularly during installation (or use an old app that hasn't been configured for needed access), the firewall itself will notify you when the access is needed. If you don't get the firewall's notifications, a software installation requiring access may be interfered with, but you won't be informed as to why.

You can read more here: https://winaero.com/blog/firewall-notifications-windows-10/

@nushie A VPN works by routing your traffic through the VPN's server and emerging with the VPN's IP address instead of yours. If the website checks for location using an IP index, it will cross-index to the VPN's location, not yours. Try it without the VPN and see if the site identifies your location correctly.

@SteveW1954 The nature of a VPN/proxy is that the VPN's own IP address is the one presented to the visited website as the origin of the visitor. If the VPN's exit-portal IP is listed as being in Europe (or wherever else), that is where the website will assume the visitor to be from (unless the website is using alternate geolocation methods in its site Javascript code - WebRTC, OS geolocation, etc).

@SteveW1954 Do you happen to have Opera's VPN turned on?

Perhaps the site made a coding change that interferes with chromium-based browsers, even though they aren't intentionally 'blocking' them. You might try contacting them at their support page 'https://www.innogames.com/support/' and select the Elvenar game support button.

@paulrevere Browsers have internal timers that are triggered when you begin the request to visit a website URL. If that times out before site access is accomplished, a blocked-access message is displayed and the browser ceases trying to contact the site. What would you instead have the browser do once the timer runs out and attempts to contact the site URL ceased, since without a message the user would be left hanging in limbo as to what was (no longer) happening?