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Why should I be wary of my browsing data being sent to China? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/asklemmy

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi all,

I don’t really know how to ask this question. On one of my devices, I downloaded a web browser (Opera) and one of my friends made fun of me, saying that “you better like China knowing all the stuff you do online”.

I read the Opera website and it says it’s a Norwegian company, but on Wikipedia it does say it was bought by a Chinese company.

My question is: what does “China” do with my personal browsing data? Why is it useful for them? (and who are we referring to here, is that the Chinese government, a private company, who?)

I’m looking forward to learn more about digital privacy, but I don’t currently understand the “obviousness” of how it is wrong to use Opera.

I’m a tech enthusiast (hence why I’m here), but I’m cognizant that I have large knowledge gaps in some of these topics.

Thank you in advance.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Others have explained why Chinese ownership of Opera might be bad.

I suggest you try the Vivaldi browser which is made by a company started by the co-founder & CEO of the original Opera. Basically builds upon the heritage and philosophy of the original Opera. Extremely customizable, tracker and ad blocking built in along with speed dials, gestures, UI customization of just about everything.

Has desktop for all platforms including Linux, and mobile for Android and iOS with sync (not going through Google) for all platforms.

Optional email, calendar, Mastodon and RSS clients in the desktop versions. Optional email account and Mastodon account accessible from any standard client and the Web, or via their desktop.

Not fully open source (nor is Opera) and built on the same open source Chromium base as Opera, Brave, Chrome, but seriously de-Googleized and does not use the Chromium UI. Will continue to support ad blocking even after Google/Chromium removal of the interfaces for ad blocking extensions. Yet desktop versions do allow installation of extensions from the Chrome/Chromium extension store.

Edit: fix link and some grammar