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Just to point out, if you have a distaste for this monetization strategy and you're reading this in Chrome I've got some bad news for you.

How so? I'm genuinely curious what information Google collects? Is Chromium better to use in this case?

If they can support a secure, adless, anonymous desktop browser for PR exposure by relying on the mobile version displaying ads I would be ok with that.

This is exactly what I fear. It's still a useful service but I believe Opera should say clearly what they do with the data they handle.

Connection is encrypted

To their servers.. Allowing any non end-to-end encrypted information to be harvested at Opera's VPN point.

Or your provider, or Opera, or own server with VPN. For majority of people setting up own server is too complicated, so it's much better than nothing, especially when you are in place where you can use only non-secure wifi network.