Loving the Opera free VPN

[s1m0n]

I've been a long time user of the (Norwegian) Opera browser, in part because their innovations - tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, mouse gestures, background downloading - all seem to rapidly become standard browser features widely copied by the competition. The latest version has native ad-blocking* - halleleu - and a free IP masking VPN. I've only recently activated the latter, and I love it. Stuff that's geo-limited or IP metered is now freely available.

My only regret is that there are only 5 different IPs to choose from - Canada, US, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, (and "optimal"). I'd like a UK IP so I can stream geo-limited BBC content, but that's looking a gift horse in the mouth. They've added locations since it first rolled out, but what they have already is (more than) worth the cost of learning a new browser, IMO.

*A whole lot of sites have guilt-trip nag pages devoted to shaming ad-blockers, but they need to find ways of generating revenue without pissing off their readers. Alienating the user is always a losing proposition. Anyway, the anti-ad-block websites all use java script to run their nags. If you appreciate ad-blocking and don't want to turn it off for some website's financial convenience, turn off scripting for that site instead. PM me if you don't know how.

[Thomaston]

I'm testing it on my iPad right now. I've been using the Chrome browser, but it's always annoyed me that I can't add an ad-blocker to the iOS app version.

Unless I'm doing it wrong, my only complaint so far is that it seems like I have to use 2 different apps. One is the browser, the other has the VPN and ad-blocking.