Opera Software today boasted that the number of new U. S. users of its namesake browser more than doubled after Congress voted to repeal online privacy protections.
Opera Software today boasted that the number of new U. S. users of its namesake browser more than doubled days after Congress voted to repeal restrictions on broadband providers eager to sell customers’ surfing history.
Opera debuted a VPN — virtual private network — a year ago, and finalized the feature in September. A VPN disguises the actual IP address of the user, effectively anonymizing the browsing, and encrypts the data transmitted to and from sites, creating a secure “tunnel” to the destination.
By using a VPN, U. S. users block their Internet service providers (ISPs) from recording their online activity.
“The average number of daily new Opera users in the U. S. has more than doubled since Congress decided to repeal certain internet privacy protections last Tuesday,” claimed the company in a statement. As support, it offered a graph illustrating a 109% increase in new U. S. users from March 28 to March 30.
“We integrated a free, no-log VPN directly into the browser to bring everyone, not just savvy users, a simple tool for protecting their privacy,” Krystian Kolondra, the head of engineering for the desktop version of Opera, said in a statement.
