Laziest and Cheapest Way to Bypass Your ISP
Congress decided that your ISP should be allowed to sell your personal browsing data, but the solutions to get around this are a little complicated, costly, or downright painful . What’s a lazy internet person to do? Use Opera.
Last year, Opera, the little browser everyone seems to forget, introduced a free VPN. Although it ran into a security issue right away due to IP leaks, it has now been fixed to be the easiest, cheapest and smarter way to access a VPN and bypass your ISP right now. However, there are many caveats here.
Here ‘s Opera’s privacy statement if you’re curious, but let’s go over the highlights. Speaking to PCWorld , an Opera spokesperson said VPN is a no-log service, which is good, but there is more. First, while Opera is a Norwegian company and therefore operates under Norwegian law, SurfEasy, the VPN service provider, is a Canadian company, and Canada is known to transmit intelligence data . However , using a VPN means you agree to SurfEasy’s Privacy Policy . Opera was also acquired by a Chinese consortium last year, so any data that Opera collects may be available to that company at some point.
It’s also good to remember that unlike a traditional VPN, which encrypts all traffic on your device as a whole, only the web browsing you do in Opera will go through their VPN. So, it looks more like a proxy than a VPN, but it still works for our purposes. You can also install Opera VPN on Android and iOS to encrypt your traffic on mobile devices. Mobile apps work like a regular VPN.
None of this matters to the average Jane bypassing her ISP out of laziness in the hope of taunting Comcast / Spectrum / AT&T / whatever, but it’s still important information to keep in mind for privacy reasons. In the end, you get what you pay for.
Well, despite all this, Opera is still a way to keep your data safe from your ISP. Here’s how to use it:
- Download Opera for your operating system.
- Click Preferences (click Opera> Preferences on Mac).
- Click the Privacy & Security section.
- Click Turn on VPN. While on this screen, you can also select the Do Not Track and Block Ads check boxes to bypass other types of tracking.
Once this is enabled, you will see a VPN button in the URL bar. I would also download and install HTTPS Everywhere, as well as Privacy Badger or Disconnect for added security and privacy.