Opera Accused of Offering Predatory Loans Through Android apps (engadget.com) 77
"It's no secret that Opera isn't doing so well in the era of Chrome dominance," reports Android Police. "According to a report published by Hindenburg Research, the company's losses in browser revenue have apparently led it to create multiple loan apps with short payment windows and interest rates of ~365-876%, which are in violation of new Play Store rules Google enacted last year."
The apps are aimed at India, Kenya and Nigeria, reports Engadget:
The apps would claim to offer maximum annual percentage rate (APR) of 33 percent or less, but the actual rates were much higher, climbing to 438 percent in the case of OPesa. And while they publicly offered reasonable loan terms of 91 to 365 days, the real length was no more than 29 days (for OKash) and more often 15 days -- well under Google's 60-day minimum. The conditions only got worse for borrowers who missed their payments. Falling short by just a day could raise the APR as high as 876 percent.
Also, the apps reportedly scraped phone contacts to harass family, friends and others with calls and texts in hopes this would pressure customers into paying up. These same notices often threatened legal action.
Android Police points out that Opera became a public company in mid-2017, shortly after it was purchased by a China-based investor group.
But since then, "Opera's market share has continued to fall, due to the increasing dominance of Chrome."
The apps are aimed at India, Kenya and Nigeria, reports Engadget:
The apps would claim to offer maximum annual percentage rate (APR) of 33 percent or less, but the actual rates were much higher, climbing to 438 percent in the case of OPesa. And while they publicly offered reasonable loan terms of 91 to 365 days, the real length was no more than 29 days (for OKash) and more often 15 days -- well under Google's 60-day minimum. The conditions only got worse for borrowers who missed their payments. Falling short by just a day could raise the APR as high as 876 percent.
Also, the apps reportedly scraped phone contacts to harass family, friends and others with calls and texts in hopes this would pressure customers into paying up. These same notices often threatened legal action.
Android Police points out that Opera became a public company in mid-2017, shortly after it was purchased by a China-based investor group.
But since then, "Opera's market share has continued to fall, due to the increasing dominance of Chrome."
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investor group not the reason (Score:3)
it's that people who were recommending opera previously will now recommend vivaldi or whatever else.
Also there's less need to be running opera mini and so on.
there's no benefit/reason to be using opera, so people don't recommend it, so the userbase is dwindling.
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Yes, this. Vivaldi is superior in functionality and spirit to Opera. It's the only viable alternative to Firefox as far as I'm concerned, pity it can't have scrolling tabs.
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I'm using Palemoon as the firefox alternative for the moment. works okay. doesn't leak up a lot of memory randomly like firefox.. I say randomly but I think it's some sites like cnn or whatever that do some funny stuff that leaks it up and messes with all tabs.
But point being yeah that the opera faithful have moved on so the core userbase is no longer there.
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Something like 10 years ago I had to black hole cnn.com in my hosts file because if I accidentally followed a link there my browser would segfault. I didn't have the same problem on any other site.
You're not wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of anti-China sentiment out there.
With good reason. Openly and defiantly violating human rights at every turn makes people angry. They even came up with a term because of these abuses: Chinazi.
I know countries aren't perfect but they are putting millions of Muslim men in concentration camps, almost are killed, sending men to rape their wives and demolishing all their cultural sites. Here's the thing though, that's just one of nightmares China is producing and there are plenty more.
China is the number one producer of misery.
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They are over-policed, over-incarcerated, killed at traffic stops, and your president says they should not be allowed to peacefully protest at events.
Don't let a bit of propaganda get in the way of facts or anything, you might hurt yourself. While you're at it, can you explain why various neighborhoods in the Greater Toronto Area(GTA) are now in a decline similar to cities like Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, despite there being no ties between either group.
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China sees Islam as a threat and is putting a stop to it. I honestly don't blame them.
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No, it is both. (Score:2)
Google is well-known for deliberately adding so many "standards" and features to their browser, that nobody can keep up, in order to kill off everyone else.
That is why the old Opera grew stale and why they decided to switch to Chromium in the first place. Which was what ultimately led to selling the corpse to a Chinese corporation.
Which now has created these apps.
So that american corporation Google and that Chinese corporation should get together. Cause their morals are about the same.
So yeah, no, your nat
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Stuff like this is why there's a lot of anti-China sentiment out there.
meh. (Score:3)
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which appear to be appalling, but no worse than other payday or short term no security lenders.
False.
Re:meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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He's not an American, that interest rate isn't legal here. He's from some backwater, probably European.
Perhaps s/he refers to your logic. (Score:2)
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They ditched Presto (Score:2)
Once they gave up their own browser engine and switched to chromium then I saw no reason to continue
WTF? (Score:2)
Opera has been based on Chromium for years. Maybe they're being evil these days, but that summary is tinfoil-hat level conspiracy bullshit (in addition to being nearly incomprehensible).
I quit using Opera when they went to Chrome, and gave up the MDI interface.
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Thesis: ""It's no secret that Opera isn't doing so well in the era of Chrome dominance,""
User argues against the thesis: "but that summary is tinfoil-hat level conspiracy bullshit"
User then confirms the thesis: "I quit using Opera when they went to Chrome"
That is what Chrome dominance MEANS. (Score:2)
Do you see conspiracy theorists everywhere?
Maybe you should get your head checked out.
They had to switch to Chromium BECAUSE of Chrome's dominance!
Google kept delinerately adding too many useless features to kill off other browsers. And no only did they almost succeed, you are rewriting history in Google's favor too!
Congratulations! You're a professional blackeyer.
That very special type of conspiracy theorist, whose pet conspiracy is, that everything taking him from his comforting dream that all is well, is
Use Vivaldi instead (Score:5, Informative)
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Vivaldi is just another Chromium browser. Just like Chrome, Edge, SRWare Iron, Brave, and all the rest.
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Yeah, but it's actually a good one. (Score:2)
You can see how they do not focus only and exclusively retards, like all the others.
More power instead of crippling limitedness (aka "simplicity", but actually cumbersomness.)
What Opera was known for. And Firefox too, before they killed add-ons and adopted the Chrome mindset.
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Just the rendering engine. UIs do make a difference, you know.
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Don't use Brave though, it's a crypto currency scam.
Firefox is good now.
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Their ad blocker can be set to allow some ads in exchange for crypto currency, basically.
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Opera is just another Chromium browser too, so what point were you trying to make, exactly?
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Indeed. The old Opera was significantly ahead. Then they lost the ethics and the people and replaced them with greed. Vivaldi is a good replacement.
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Then they lost the ethics and the people and replaced them with greed.
Opera is now a public company, according to the article. Try explaining to its shareholders that they should abandon greed (together with a part of the profits) in the name of ethics.
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Then they lost the ethics and the people and replaced them with greed.
Opera is now a public company, according to the article. Try explaining to its shareholders that they should abandon greed (together with a part of the profits) in the name of ethics.
I am not addressing the shareholders here. They can go to hell as far as I am concerned.
Vivaldi is not Free as in Freedom. (Score:2)
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What was once Opera now is gone. The main people moved over to a new browser project called Vivaldi. Use that instead. Runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android.
http://vivaldi.com/ [vivaldi.com] Uninstall Opera.
I had never heard about Vivaldi before I saw your post last night (it was early after the story went live and there weren't many posts here).
I got curious and decided to try it out. After using it for a day it is indeed a fast intuitive browser. Thanks for the suggestion!
Fuck! I use Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
I used it way way back and then tried it again 3 - 4 years ago. It works fairly well but I have noticed over the last year and a half that various features (browsing history, tabs between browsers) has stopped working. Perhaps this is why?
I had no idea it was bought by a Chinese company. This thing stores all my passwords. And now it turns out the owner of the browser is using it to do payday loans to poor people.
Methinks it's time to GTFO.
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At the time I still preferred it to IE / Edge, Firefox, or Chrome. It had ad blocking, decent pop-up blocking, and other stuff built in. Admittedly it hasn't been maintained and has gone downhill over time.
Gone to garbage? Sure. But at the time not more than other browsers.
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You might want to start changing your passwords while you're at it.
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I use Linux when I can. I don't use Mozilla products at all. As for Google.......well let me know when you figure out how to avoid that one. For the moment at least they're subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
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I got a bad taste in my mouth from their products. I used Firefox for years when it first came out. Eventually it became a bloated slow memory hog. From there I switched, ironically enough, to the original Opera. I also used Thunderbird for email but with a year went back to Outlook due to errors and problems syncing my devices (if that tells ya how long ago it was).
I have tried Firefox once or twice again since and still found it a buggy slow resource hog.
Someone said recently that the code base had be
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If you enjoy Opera but want to get away from it for those reasons, I'd suggest trying Brave or Vivaldi.
I decided to quit Chrome about two years back and spent a bit over a year going through all of the major competitors, giving each at least a month before moving onto the next, that way I'd have time to find workarounds/replacements for missing extensions/features, as well as have the time to let them settle in so that I could get used to each one's quirks. In order, I went through Firefox, Safari, Opera, V
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After posting all this last night, I downloaded Vivaldi and stayed up until 2 a.m. customizing and testing it. I have to say I am very pleased thus far. It imported all my history and passwords from Opera. The browsing is *fast* and there are several Chrome extensions that I had wanted to try but couldn't as Opera couldn't use them.
Today as I started using the browser more, I became aware of annoyances and behaviors in Opera that I had just learned to live with and ignore (page renderings, tab behavior,
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Don't forget to change all your passwords you had stored there.
Shouldn't this put them... (Score:2)
Right below Google I'd say. (Score:2)
Due to being smaller.
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They are too small.
So not Opera then. (Score:2)
So this is a Chinese corporation, using a skinned Chrome browser.
What has anything of that to do with Opera, other than having bought the name of a dead one?
Reminds me of one of those other dead electronics companies, whose name is on trash products by various different Chinese companies.
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What has anything of that to do with Opera, other than having bought the name of a dead one?
Nothing. Well, the Logo. These days you need to monitor carefully who dies, because there are far too many Ghouls around and far too many names that used to mean something are now clear "stay away" signs.
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Not as good as a car... (Score:2)
YOU get a loan! YOU get a loan! YOU get a loan!