Identifying the Opera browser unique identification strng

Why not just stop using Opera?

This is a technical question, so the answer you seek is below, but the answer doesn't change the need for the technical answer to the question.

That point being made that the question remains a technical question no matter what the answer to your psychological question is, to answer your rationale question directly, unfortunately, Opera has value as a rare free vpn service that isn't blocked by almost all major forums and major web sites.

By way of complete contract, the just-as-free FF-based tbb exit nodes are almost always blocked (and tbb is far slower than is Opera).

You might suggest a free vpn combined with ff but most of them seem to be blocked also by most web sites (security kiss, hidemyass, cyberghost, etc.).

The Opera privacy policy isn't all that scary

But this is a technical question so it really doesn't matter why.

It's a Linux question of how to "trap" the unique id transmission or creation or how to find it inside the Opera binary.

If it helps, here is how I installed Opera via PPA on Ubuntu:

1. Set up the key: wget -O -
   formatting link
   | sudo apt-key add -
2. Set up the repository: sudo sh -c 'echo "deb
   formatting link
   stable non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/opera.list'
3. Set up the package: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install opera

No it was not "below", unless you meant that the answer to my question was below, not the OP's question. ...

But the fact of the "Unique ID" IS scary. The assurance that this is not linkedto the uaser is of very little worth, because the browser history, and their mainainig a database of everything you do with the browser means that the link between the number and you would not be hard o make. It would be far more useful for oprivacy if instead they told you how to opt out of thi unique ID. "just believe us-- we are doing this for your own good" is not very comforting from anyone. Their privacy policy basically says "We do not give a damn about your privacy".

I do not believe it is in the binary. To make a unique id for each person means that they either generate on the fly or do it once and save it somewhere, perhaps in encrypted form so you cannot find it.

Using closed source blob for web surfing is not wise in any way...

--
press any key to continue or any other to quit...

I'm sorry for saying it's not scary.

My way of answering you wasn't meant to minimize the privacy issue as much as it was to try to focus you on the first step of figuring out what this unique id looks like.

We can talk about the issue and wave our arms around until the cows come home but I'm hoping to somehow trap the unique id to take a look at it - which is why I'm asking for your help.

I need to know if you know of a tool that we can use on Ubuntu to figure out what the heck Opera is sending home about each of its users.

Something like wireshark spits out so much that I need help in narrowing it down to just the communication with the opera servers.

We can wax prolifically but I don't think anyone knows exactly what Opera is sending home to the mother ship.

So we'd break new ground if we knew of a tool that we could use to identify what is being sent home.

If you did some research Opera's free VPN isn't a VPN at all, it's more of a proxy.

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Caver1

Mad Roger :

FYI, there is a Ubuntu newsgroup: alt.os.linux.ubuntu

Yrrah

Thanks for the admonition that there is a ubuntu-specific ng.

It might have been best to originally crosspost to a.o.l & a.o.l.u; but there's little utility in starting a new thread because there is no indication that this is an operating-system specific quest.

Given that Opera, on all operating systems, generates and transmits a unique id to someone somehow, where would you hazard a guess as to specifically how the unique id is generated (so that we may spoof its parameters perhaps) and where the ID is stored (so that we may look at it perhaps) & in what form do you think it's transmitted & to whom (so that we may watch and intercept it perhaps)?

Where do you think the ID is stored & in what form do you think it's transmitted & to whom?

I did plenty of research (but I am not an expert!), where four things are of note, two of which everyone knows (so it has no value in this thread), and two of which are not posted anywhere in the web so you could sort of say only we know.

Everyone knows this:

1. Opera is a fast free unlimited (pseudo)proxy service for web browsing
2. It's based on Chromium (which may mean it uses Chrome-like unique iDs)

Only we seem to know this:

1. Opera is one of the rare (psuedo)vpn's that work with most web forums
2. There must be a way to trap & identify the unique install ID assigned

If this thread was about the first two items, the thread wouldn't exist. The thread is about the latter two items, specifically that last item.

If that last item were obvious, then it would have been resolved already.

The question at hand is how to trap that unique id with the end goal in mind being to spoof it eventually; but you can't spoof that which you can't see.

There's either a unique static binary ID, or a static config file ID, or the unique ID is generated on the fly.

Where do you think the ID is stored & in what form do you think it's transmitted and to whom?

But this has nothing to do with the repair of electronic devices, which is what sci.electronics.repair is about.

I'm tired of fools who somehow think talking about computers fits in here.

Unless your problem can be fixed by replacing a component, then it doesn't belong here.

Michael

I am virtually certain that there is nothing special about ubuntu in any of this. tools available on Ubuntu are also there on other versions of Linux. This is about opera (which operates on all versions of linux).

This is not a question in which wild guesses are going to be of much use.

IF you know where the uniqID is sent to you could use tcpdump with that IP as the host. But since we have no idea where it is sent to, that is probably pointless.

You have the source for Opera, and you could look through that to find if there are any indicators to "unique ID"

Just starting Opera to a blank page makes connections, depending on the setup, where the current set of connections includes a few things that we can discount, such as an autoupdate of some sort, and speedials and some search engine updates.

Slowly I'm turning off each of these below, using the Opera settings, and/or the /etc/hosts file so that I can narrow down what it connects to for sending the Subscriber-ID (from Opera Inc) and Device-ID (from SurfEasy).

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

37 200 HTTP Tunnel to autoupdate.geo.opera.com:443 0 opera_autoupdate:10512

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

38 200 HTTP /stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml 1,624 text/xml opera:7576

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

24 200 HTTPS speeddials.opera.com /api/v1/suggestions?country=US&language=en-US&uuid=ae57db72-45af-4547-8714-4d0686940320&type=desktop-suggestions 1,496 max-age=3600 application/json opera:9080

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

5 304 HTTP crl.globalsign.net /root-r2.crl 0 Expires: Tue, 25 Jul 2017 13:23:06 GMT svchost:1668

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

6 304 HTTP pki.google.com /GIAG2.crl 0 Expires: Tue, 25 Jul 2017 14:45:30 GMT svchost:1668

Still working on it though so take this with a huge grain of salt because I'm only looking at the http protocol right now (so that I can narrow down the data to search through).

Just for the record, here are the startup calls Opera makes to the search engines, even with everything possible in the settings turned off.

These are in order, with, I think, all but the last two not being important, I don't think, for our purpose, and hence can be filtered out.

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

2 200 HTTP /favicon.ico 1,494 public, max-age=691200; Expires: Tue, 01 Aug 2017 08:13:18 GMT image/x-icon opera:2616

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

3 200 HTTP Tunnel to duckduckgo.com:443 0 opera:2616

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

4 200 HTTP /s/a/bing_p.ico 300 public, max-age=15552000 image/x-icon opera:2616

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

5 200 HTTP Tunnel to 0 opera:2616

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

6 200 HTTP Tunnel to 0 opera:2616

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

7 200 HTTP Tunnel to search.yahoo.com:443 0 opera:2616

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

8 200 HTTP /stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml 1,624 text/xml opera:2616

# Result Protocol Host URL Body Caching Content-Type Process Comments Custom

9 200 HTTP Tunnel to autoupdate.geo.opera.com:443 0 opera:2616

I think of the nine connections that happen at startup, only #8 and #9 seem significant for our purpose.

Please don't feed the troll.

It's only one step if the network disconnect/reconnect isn't needed: 1. opera://settings/clearBrowserData

I still need to test further but the solution below seems to work but it's a bit onerous to disconnect/reconnect the network, so I don't recommend it until I can provide a better one-click method.

1. Disable the network 2. Open Opera to a start page of "opera://settings/clearBrowserData" (Clear everything Marek found to wipe out the unique vpn & user id) 3. Reconnect the network

That's what I have been doing but I need to practice wireshark more to figure out if I must disable/enable the network or if it works without that step to wipe out the old unique user and vpn ids.