New feature in Opera Max enhances Android users' privacy

Many apps send out hundreds, even thousands of requests per day to third parties and put their user’s privacy at risk. New Opera Max’s privacy mode reveals which apps are bad and which app are good in terms of sharing data with third parties.

With the latest feature, data is kept encrypted and ‘anonymized.’ It provides an extra layer of industry-standard TLS/SSL protection on top of whatever the banking, shopping or messaging app does or does not offer.

“Most people would not reveal their credit card details or full name to employees of a physical store where they live when shopping and browsing for products. But, on mobile apps, people are not aware that this kind of information can be shared,” says Sergey Lossev, Head of Product, Opera Max.

"That is why we have implemented privacy mode in Opera Max. We want to educate our users by revealing which apps are sharing your data through trackers without your permission," he added

Users can scroll up and down the privacy mode timeline regularly and also tap on individual’s timeline cards to see the ‘privacy breakdown’ of what an app did in a particular session. The new privacy timeline is a useful tool to monitor when apps are putting user’s private data at risk.

Opera Max’s privacy mode will not only reveal which apps are high privacy risks, but can help in blocking these trackers. The core of Opera Max’s blocking mechanisms is based on the EasyPrivacy filter list, which is a reliable, open-source platform used by other ad-blocking services as well. It helps reduce the amount of profiling users are subjected to.

Most smartphone apps do not fully encrypt their data requests. Instead of using only https (or another secure way of sending data) these apps use http and end up transmitting users’ data in "clear text". Using unencrypted (http) apps on a public Wi-Fi network is like opening a door for cybercriminals to access important data, including account names, passwords and conversations saved on the mobile device.

Hackers can intercept all of your traffic and read everything you send that is not encrypted. With privacy mode in Opera Max, users can encrypt all app data and browsing traffic on Wi-Fi with a tap of a button. This offers the users an additional layer of privacy and security so that there is not even one iota of chance of your personal data being misused by someone else.  

Users can download the new, updated version of Opera Max on the Google Play Store.