Vivaldi Browser and Privacy

[Faybert]

Vivaldi Technologies AS was accused recently of incorporating spyware in the browser. A user claimedthat Vivaldi Technologies incorporated spyware in the browser because the browser connects to https://update.vivaldi.com/stats/piwik.php regularly.

Piwik is a self-hosted analytics software that companies and individuals like to install if they don't want to use third-party hosted services such as Google Analytics. The main advantage of Piwik and other self-hosted solutions is that no one but the company hosting the solution gets access to the data.

It is a fact that the Vivaldi browser transfers data to Vivaldi's self-hosted analytics server. The following paragraphs look at the data that is transferred and how the data is used by Vivaldi.

Vivaldi is open about privacy

If you read the Vivaldi Browser privacy policy, you know that the browser assigns a unique ID to the installation and sends it along with other data to a Vivaldi server in Iceland.

The "other data", is the browser version, CPU architecture, screen resolution, time since last message and the first three octets of the IP address.

When you install Vivaldi browser (“Vivaldi”), each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your computer. Vivaldi will send a message using HTTPS directly to our servers located in Iceland every 24 hours containing this ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message.

The company uses the data in the following manner:

• Unique ID: Only used to get an approximate count of users.
• IP address: Vivalid uses the three octets to get an approximate location using a local geoip solution. The company uses the data to "determine the total number of active users and their geographical distribution". Vivaldi turned off logging on updates.vivaldi.com so that it does not store IP addresses of users connecting to the server.
• Browser version: Used to make sure that part of the userbase is not left behind due to update issues.
• Screen resolution and CPU architecture: Vivaldi uses the information to set up test systems to test the browser on.

The data is sent over an encrypted HTTPS connection.

To sum it up: Vivaldi Technologies does not collect a lot of data and the data that it collects is used to improve the browser or get general statistics about the browser's userbase. The company reveals the data that it collects and what it uses the data for in the second paragraph of the privacy policy.

Closing Words
Privacy conscious Vivaldi users may object to the generating of a unique ID and the lack of an opt-out option the most. This is understandable as companies used IDs in the past to track users.

Vivaldi promises to use the ID only for counting the overall number of users. The company could use different means for that, for instance, the number of devices requesting an update plus an estimate of the number of devices without automatic updates turned on.

It is easy enough to delete the ID though and it is different anyway if you use Vivaldi on multiple devices.

Now You: What's your take on this?

Article Source: Vivaldi browser and privacy - gHacks Tech News

 

[Ink]

1. No one bothers reading the Privacy Policy, Terms of Services, User Agreement etc.
   
2. It is a good idea to skim read through them before signing up to apps and services.
3. Go back to 1.

 

[darko999]

I like "incorporating spyware in the browser". People will do blasting stuff in order to put down Vivaldi as it has been gaining more popularity over time.
The browser is amazing, it works fast and stable; it really does a pretty good job as my main browser. Stuff I could never customize in previous browsers are no problem here with Vivaldi. I find it a bit stupid that people kinda freak out by tittles like this one, you'd already know how Google and all other big Corps gather massive data and you won't complain, but Vivaldi does it's part and we gotta put the Spyware somewhere to call attention. I don't want to point op but this thread was like damn one of these I read and then end up like there used to be better stuff than this bloatattentionwho, kinda sucks. People should be making threads about all software that uses identifiers "Very common today" and that ain't happening. Why bother with Vivaldi, it has never been a malware hive as far as I know.