[Tips] Tweak Opera Web Browser Settings to Improve Your Privacy

UPDATE: Tutorial updated with new options and screenshots matching with newer versions of Opera web browser.

Personally I use Mozilla Firefox web browser at work and home but there are many AskVG readers who use Opera web browser. So today in this tutorial, I’m going to share a few tips for Opera which will help you in improving your privacy while using the web browser.

Actually every web browser comes with a few built-in options which help the web browser in improving page load performance but sometimes these options may also send your usage data and statistics to the web browser company automatically without your knowledge. So its always better to disable these options if you want complete privacy.

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If you are an Opera user and want to improve your privacy, you should definitely check out following simple steps:

1. First of all open Opera web browser, click on Opera button present at the top-left corner of Opera window and then click on Settings. You can also directly open Opera Settings page by pressing ALT+P keys together.

2. By default Opera opens your last browsing session upon startup. That means if you were browsing a website and you close the web browser and after some time another person opens Opera web browser, it’ll automatically open that website and the other person will automatically know what website you were vising last time.

It might become a privacy issue if you don’t want other people to know what website you visited last time. Don’t worry! You can disable this feature using following steps:

Scroll down on Settings page and under “On startup” section, you can select the option according to your requirements. It would be set to “Continue where you left off” by default. You can change it to “Open the start page” or “Open a specific page or set of pages” options.

Change_Opera_Startup_Behavior_Options.png

Now Opera will never restore your last visited websites upon startup.

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3. Now scroll down to bottom and click on “Advanced” link. It’ll show advanced settings options.

4. Under “Privacy and security” section, disable following options:

  • Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar (More Info)
  • Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly
  • Allow sites to check if you have payment methods saved
  • Automatically send crash reports to Opera
  • Help improve Opera by sending feature usage information
  • Help improve Opera services by sending data about trending websites
  • Fetch images for suggested sources in News, based on history
  • Send news usage data to improve personalization (More Info)

Improve_Opera_Privacy_Settings.png

If you want, you can also enable following option to improve privacy:

  • Send a ‘Do Not Track’ request with your browsing traffic

5. Now under “Start page” section, disable following options:

  • Receive promoted Speed Dials and Bookmarks (More Info)
  • Show Speed Dial suggestions

6. That’s it. Once you follow the above mentioned steps, you’ll have better privacy settings in Opera web browser.

Also Check:

[Tip] Disable Telemetry and Data Collection in Mozilla Firefox Quantum

Published in: Opera

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. Nice article. But I would like to say that the “Do Not Track” check box can provide a false sense of security. While a few websites will pay attention to it, the vast majority of websites will ignore your preference. The Do Not Track header has three possible values:

    1 – Do Not Track (Opt out of tracking)
    2 – Track (Opt into tracking)
    Null – No preference
    By default, web browsers use the null value, indicating that you haven’t expressed a desire of whether you want to be tracked or not.

    Enabling “Do Not Track” doesn’t change any browser privacy settings. When you enable Do Not Track, your web browser asks each website you connect to please not track you.

    The problem is that most websites simply ignore the “do not track” request. Websites have to be updated to pay attention to this field, and most websites aren’t interested in obeying it.

    This is something you guys should know 🙂
    But good article anyways
    Keep it up VG

  2. Also select “Block third-party cookies and site data” and Keep local data only until I quit my browser.

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