Opera Browser

[sponge]

Today I tried the Opera Web browser, and I must say
I'm fully convinced and have switched from IE to Opera.

In IE (and OE, and nearly all "software" of Microsoft)
nearly every click on any link starts some external plugins/
DLLs/OCX etc. etc. to collect data, and which nowadays
have become the most dangerous things for virus
installations/distributions and spyware backdoors.
My concern was especially the security issues plus privacy.
It is a shameful practice by some (too many!) companies
on the net to collect horrible sum of data from each
surfer secretly and hiddenly by the above mentioned
methods. I've analyzed what network traffic and program
modules each click on a web page (even locally stored
HTMLs! ) hiddenly do. You won't believe it if you haven't
analyzed it yourself! I can only say: be very very cautious
when you click on any link in this WWW jungle of nowadys!

In Opera these threats are minimal as far as I could see it;
I guess maybe 1% compared to Microsoft's IE.

Regarding privacy: just read Opera's privacy policy plus
their partner's Google's; they are fair and user friendly.

BTW, Opera is an example for a modern software: everything
is flexible, resizeable, individually configurable, modular, ...

And, I'm planning also to replace my Win2K with Linux.
BTW, I'm "Microsoft Certified System Egineer" , so I
really know of what I'm talking of...

UM

Opera's nice. I don't use it's mail or news features (Pegasus for the
former, a modified Agent 1.81 for the latter), but I personally
wouldn't use anything else. However, I'm staying with version 6.06 on
Windows and 6.12 on Linux and FreeBSD.There hae been some security
issues due to new features in Version 7, and I don't like the new
interface. Still, it's so good, it's worth paying for, even though it
is perfectly legal to use the free version and blocking the ads is a
piece of cake.

Sponge
Sponge's Secure Solutions
www.geocities.com/yosponge
My new email: yosponge2 att yahoo dott com

 

[hp.vandenoord]

Here a message from out of the Netherlands,

I use Opera for some weeks now and I must say: I like it!!
But...(isn´t there always a but??)...2 weeks ago, my Opera got an
infection that Norton couldn't fix so Opera wouldn't start anymore. I
desided it was time to switch from W98SE to XP and install Opera followd
by fetching my mail directories from the dammaged Opera. Whatever I tried
I couldn't get my mail & contacts back!!!! by copying several folders back
to the new Opera. Searching opera for nice a backup facility only came up
with a Export/Import facillity THAT WOULDN"T WORK the way it should work
in the help file.....

Is there someone outthere who has found/made a nice way to easely backup
ALL IMPORTANT setups/mail/contacts from Opera for a "kickstart-Opera"
after a fresch installation......
Regards,

Hans van den Oord

 

[BoB]

Opera's nice. I don't use it's mail or news features (Pegasus for the
former, a modified Agent 1.81 for the latter), but I personally
wouldn't use anything else. However, I'm staying with version 6.06 on
Windows and 6.12 on Linux and FreeBSD.There hae been some security
issues due to new features in Version 7, and I don't like the new
interface. Still, it's so good, it's worth paying for, even though it
is perfectly legal to use the free version and blocking the ads is a
piece of cake.

Sponge
Sponge's Secure Solutions
www.geocities.com/yosponge
My new email: yosponge2 att yahoo dott com

Gee Sponge, you must really have 1.81 tweaked to perfection to
not want to upgrade.

I bought the new 2.0 yesterday to try to help wring out bugs
since Agent is a total re-write in a new language. I sent two
crash dump reports the first day.

Since I have the time, I enjoy trying new stuff. I received a
free registration recently on a newly developed file manager
when I reported the 'only' bug it had, which was a bad one. He
had v2.1 out real quick.

BoB

 

[sponge]

Here a message from out of the Netherlands,

I use Opera for some weeks now and I must say: I like it!!
But...(isn´t there always a but??)...2 weeks ago, my Opera got an
infection that Norton couldn't fix so Opera wouldn't start anymore. I
desided it was time to switch from W98SE to XP and install Opera followd
by fetching my mail directories from the dammaged Opera. Whatever I tried
I couldn't get my mail & contacts back!!!! by copying several folders back
to the new Opera. Searching opera for nice a backup facility only came up
with a Export/Import facillity THAT WOULDN"T WORK the way it should work
in the help file.....

Is there someone outthere who has found/made a nice way to easely backup
ALL IMPORTANT setups/mail/contacts from Opera for a "kickstart-Opera"
after a fresch installation......
Regards,

Hans van den Oord

I don't think that was an infection, because I had the same trouble
when I first started using it and had to reinstall. It's possible --
particularly if you manually edit it -- for the configuration file,
opera6.ini to become corrupt, causing the browser to fail to start. I
tried removal, reinstallation, and then replacement of that file to
determine that.

The solution is to get Opera's interface the way you like it and then
make a backup of opera6.ini (I think it is called this even in Version
7). If the browser gets screwy, just replace this file from the backup
while it's not running and everything is hunky-dory. I had to do this
twice after that due to some stuff relating to MS patches and software
development, but I have used Opera 6 for Windows for about a year now
without a problem worth mentioning.

And I've never had appreciable problems with the Unix or Linux
versions, besides the text being a little too small on a Linux box
running X. I think that was only because I changed the screen
resolution in X after installing Opera, and Opera -- or, more likely,
X -- didn't adjust the font sizes in Opera and kept them small.

No big deal.

Sponge
Sponge's Secure Solutions
www.geocities.com/yosponge
My new email: yosponge2 att yahoo dott com.

 

[Bart Bailey]

Is there someone outthere who has found/made a nice way to easely backup
ALL IMPORTANT setups/mail/contacts from Opera for a "kickstart-Opera"
after a fresch installation......

I just rar and save the whole program folder to another partition,
but I think the two most important files are;
Opera6.adr - your bookmarks
Opera6.ini - your settings
I don't use the email nor newsreader parts, so there may be other files
that you would want to save too, if you use those functions.

 

[hp.vandenoord]

Thanks for the information and wish you a lot of virus free emails.

 

[hp.vandenoord]

Thanks for the information and also wishing you a lot of virus free emails.

 

[Bart Bailey]

Thanks for the information and also wishing you a lot of virus free emails.

You're welcome.
FWIW: All my email from all accounts gets screened with Mailwasher Pro
and anything with attachments (viral or not), HTML, or clickable URLs
gets flagged for deletion, and after a quick glance to confirm, is
removed from the server unread.

 

[Norman L. DeForest]

Wrong. _You_ need it. Others don't need idiot sites.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

For all the hype about online banking having security holes. I think they
take security very serious. [...]

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahah!

Thanks for the laugh of the day.

I have received phish spam trying to sucker in people into providing their
banking information to crooks so they can clean out their victim's bank
accounts. The spammers use deceptive URLs that look like they are going
to the bank web site and their fake sites actually link to the real bank's
images and pages.

It wouldn't be too difficult for any bank to set up their web server to
check the referrer for the images and serve up different images to the
bogus sites warning people that the site is not legitimate. It would
not be too diffiult for them to put a notice on their "security" pages
about phishing attempts. It would not be too difficult for them to post
notices of phishing attempts in their banks warning people not to trust
URLs in email.

None of the banks that I have contacted about the phishes have done any
of these things. Some make it virtually impossible to report these
phishing attempts to them. (Try calling one of their 1-800 numbers
on a Friday evening when a phishing email arrived and see if you can get
anyone before Banking hours Monday morning after the phisher has had all
weekend to gather account information and clean out a bunch of accounts.)

[...] Every bank that provides online banking has
Internet Explorer as a 'recognised' browser for internet banking.

One feature that can reduce a user's security on the Internet is
JavaScript because of its ability to make the browser display bogus
information about a site and hide the real location of it. Only *one*
Canadian bank that I know of does not require JavaScript to be enabled to
use their services. It is the only one that recommends that JavaScript be
turned off except when visiting trusted sites. It is not the bank where I
currently have my account. If I ever needed on-line banking, I would be
moving my account.

Going by this, banks would seem to consider IE's security to be 'OK'

Going by my experience, most banks don't give a shit about customers
who get suckered in by phishers. The attitude seems to be that it's
*their* fault (and only their fault) if they get suckered in.

 

[Dave Ryman]

(snip)

Before you totally abandon IE, you should know that there are
quite a few web sites out there that will only run properly on
IE. Opera will occasionally object, usually by freezing up, so
if you want to see that web site you MUST use IE. My
policy nowadays is to stay away from IE-only sites unless
there is no other choice.
(snip)

Yep - just try playing an MS Zone game on Netscape!

--
Regards,
Dave

(e-mail address removed)
http://welcome.to/daves.website
http://travel.to/formula.one

 

[Janus]

....snip...

Before you totally abandon IE, you should know that there are
quite a few web sites out there that will only run properly on
IE. Opera will occasionally object, usually by freezing up, so
if you want to see that web site you MUST use IE. My
policy nowadays is to stay away from IE-only sites unless
there is no other choice.

So, the fact that designers are too lazy to check their sites in more
than one browser becomes my problem? No.

If a site doesn't work in NS/MZ/Firefox and/or Opera then one should
complain. Therre isn't much one can do about private sites, but
commercial sites are pretty responsive. Designers might get lazy, but
you can bet that enough complaints will rouse their clients to demand
changes.

Just my two yen,

ts
(whose sites ALWAYS work in NS/Mz/Firefox and Opera)

 

[Shane]

...snip...

So, the fact that designers are too lazy to check their sites in more
than one browser becomes my problem? No.

If a site doesn't work in NS/MZ/Firefox and/or Opera then one should
complain. Therre isn't much one can do about private sites, but
commercial sites are pretty responsive. Designers might get lazy, but
you can bet that enough complaints will rouse their clients to demand
changes.

But the main one of course is Windows Update.

Shane

 

[@]

***Special CONFIRMED Report. ****Assassins; who put Al-Qaeda to Shame.
The Number three most powerful man , after Dick Cheney & G.W. BUSH .

ALL Ariel Sharon's servants , Thugs & Mruderers.

Karl ROVE & Ariel Sharon banking on their Syrian killers & Murdereres &
Special Syrian Assassins of Assef Shawkat & Roustom Ghazali .

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/052104Madsen/052104madsen.html


Karl Rove's White House " Murder, Inc."

By Wayne Madsen .
Online Journal Contributing Writer .



JULY, 2004- On September 15, 2001, just four days after the 9-11 attacks,
CIA Director George Tenet provided President [sic] Bush with a Top Secret
"Worldwide Attack Matrix"-a virtual license to kill targets deemed to be a
threat to the United States in some 80 countries around the world. The Tenet
plan, which was subsequently approved by Bush, essentially reversed the
executive orders of four previous U.S. administrations that expressly
prohibited political assassinations.

According to high level European intelligence officials, Bush's counselor,
Karl Rove, used the new presidential authority to silence a popular Lebanese
Christian politician who was planning to offer irrefutable evidence that
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the massacre of hundreds of
Palestinian men, women, and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra
and Shatilla in 1982. In addition, Sharon provided the Lebanese forces who
carried out the grisly task. At the time of the massacres, Elie Hobeika was
intelligence chief of Lebanese Christian forces in Lebanon who were battling
Palestinians and other Muslim groups in a bloody civil war. He was also the
chief liaison to Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel in Lebanon. An
official Israeli inquiry into the massacre at the camps, the Kahan
Commission, merely found Sharon "indirectly" responsible for the slaughter
and fingered Hobeika as the chief instigator.

The Kahan Commission never called on Hobeika to offer testimony in his
defense. However, in response to charges brought against Sharon before a
special war crimes court in Belgium, Hobeika was urged to testify against
Sharon, according to well-informed Lebanese sources. Hobeika was prepared to
offer a different version of events than what was contained in the Kahan
report. A 1993 Belgian law permitting human rights prosecutions was unusual
in that non-Belgians could be tried for violations against other
non-Belgians in a Belgian court. Under pressure from the Bush
administration, the law was severely amended and the extra territoriality
provisions were curtailed.

Hobeika headed the Lebanese forces intelligence agency since the mid- 1970s
and he soon developed close ties to the CIA. He was a frequent visitor to
the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia. After the Syrian invasion of
Lebanon in 1990, Hobeika held a number of cabinet positions in the Lebanese
government, a proxy for the Syrian occupation authorities. He also served in
the parliament. In July 2001, Hobeika called a press conference and
announced he was prepared to testify against Sharon in Belgium and revealed
that he had evidence of what actually occurred in Sabra and Shatilla.
Hobeika also indicated that Israel had flown members of the South Lebanon
Army (SLA) into Beirut International Airport in an Israeli Air Force C130
transport plane. In full view of dozens of witnesses, including members of
the Lebanese army and others, SLA troops under the command of Major Saad
Haddad were slipped into the camps to commit the massacres. The SLA troops
were under the direct command of Ariel Sharon and an Israeli Mossad agent
provocateur named Rafi Eitan. Hobeika offered evidence that a former U.S.
ambassador to Lebanon was aware of the Israeli plot. In addition, the IDF
had placed a camera in a strategic position to film the Sabra and Shatilla
massacres. Hobeika was going to ask that the footage be released as part of
the investigation of Sharon.

After announcing he was willing to testify against Sharon, Hobeika became
fearful for his safety and began moves to leave Lebanon. Hobeika was not
aware that his threats to testify against Sharon had triggered a series of
fateful events that reached well into the White House and Sharon's office.

On January 24, 2002, Hobeika's car was blown up by a remote controlled bomb
placed in a parked Mercedes along a street in the Hazmieh section of Beirut.
The bomb exploded when Hobeika and his three associates, Fares Souweidan,
Mitri Ajram, and Waleed Zein, were driving their Range Rover past the
TNT-laden Mercedes at 9:40 am Beirut time. The Range Rover's four passengers
were killed in the explosion. In case Hobeika's car had taken another route
through the neighborhood, two additional parked cars, located at two other
choke points, were also rigged with TNT. The powerful bomb wounded a number
of other people on the street. Other parked cars were destroyed and
buildings and homes were damaged. The Lebanese president, prime minister,
and interior minister all claimed that Israeli agents were behind the
attack.

It is noteworthy that the State Department's list of global terrorist
incidents for 2002 worldwide failed to list the car bombing attack on
Hobeika and his party. The White House wanted to ensure the attack was
censored from the report. The reason was simple: the attack ultimately had
Washington's fingerprints on it.

High level European intelligence sources now report that Karl Rove
personally coordinated Hobeika's assassination. The hit on Hobeika employed
Syrian intelligence agents. Syrian President Bashar Assad was trying to
curry favor with the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9-11 and was
more than willing to help the White House. In addition, Assad's father,
Hafez Assad, had been an ally of Bush's father during Desert Storm, a period
that saw Washington give a "wink and a nod" to Syria's occupation of
Lebanon. Rove wanted to help Sharon avoid any political embarrassment from
an in absentia trial in Brussels where Hobeika would be a star witness. Rove
and Sharon agreed on the plan to use Syrian Military Intelligence agents to
assassinate Hobeika. Rove saw Sharon as an indispensable ally of Bush in
ensuring the loyalty of the Christian evangelical and Jewish voting blocs in
the United States. Sharon saw the plan to have the United States coordinate
the hit as a way to mask all connections to Jerusalem.

The Syrian hit team was ordered by Assef Shawkat, the number two man in
Syrian military intelligence and a good friend and brother in law of Syrian
President Bashar Assad. Assad's intelligence services had already cooperated
with U.S. intelligence in resorting to unconventional methods to extract
information from al Qaeda detainees deported to Syria from the United States
and other countries in the wake of 9-11. The order to take out Hobeika was
transmitted by Shawkat to Roustom Ghazali, the head of Syrian military
intelligence in Beirut. Ghazali arranged for the three remote controlled
cars to be parked along Hobeika's route in Hazmieh; only few hundred yards
from the Barracks of Syrian Special Forces which are stationed in the area
near the Presidential palace , the ministry of Defense and various
Government and officers quarters . This particular area is covered 24/7 by a
very sophisticated USA multi-agency surveillance system to monitor Syrian
and Lebanese security activities and is a " Choice " area to live in for its
perceived high security .

The plan to kill Hobeika had all the necessary caveats and built-in denial
mechanisms. If the Syrians were discovered beforehand or afterwards, Karl
Rove and his associates in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans would be
ensured plausible deniability.

Hobeika's CIA intermediary in Beirut, a man only referred to as "Jason" by
Hobeika, was a frequent companion of the Lebanese politician during official
and off-duty hours. During Hobeika's election campaigns for his
parliamentary seat, Jason was often in Hobeika's office offering support and
advice. After Hobeika's assassination, Jason became despondent over the
death of his colleague. Eventually, Jason disappeared abruptly from Lebanon
and reportedly later emerged in Pakistan.

Karl Rove's involvement in the assassination of Hobeika may not have been
the last "hit" he ordered to help out Sharon. In March 2002, a few months
after Hobeika's assassination, another Lebanese Christian with knowledge of
Sharon's involvement in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres was gunned down
along with his wife in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A bullet fired at Michael Nassar's
car flattened one of his tires. Nassar pulled into a gasoline station for
repairs. A professional assassin, firing a gun with a silencer, shot Nassar
and his wife in the head, killing them both instantly. The assailant fled
and was never captured. Nassar was also involved with the Phalange militia
at Sabra and Shatilla. Nassar was also reportedly willing to testify against
Sharon in Belgium and, as a nephew of SLA Commander General Antoine Lahd,
may have had important evidence to bolster Hobeika's charge that Sharon
ordered SLA forces into the camps to wipe out the Palestinians.

Based on what European intelligence claims is concrete intelligence on
Rove's involvement in the assassination of Hobeika, the Bush administration
can now add political assassination to its laundry list of other misdeeds,
from lying about the reasons to go to war to the torture tactics in
violation of the Geneva Conventions that have been employed by the Pentagon
and "third country" nationals at prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and
columnist. He served in the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan
administration and wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the
co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of
George Bush II." His forthcoming book is titled: "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil,
Black Ops, and Brass Plates." Madsen can be reached at:
(e-mail address removed)

This is some of the evidence for you and for the World ....


~~~encrypted/logs/access ~~~

Not to mention hundreds of private companies and governments. Anyway...
Lines 10-36
of my logfiles show a lot of interest in this article:

# grep sid=1052 /encrypted/logs/access_log|awk '{print $1,$7}'|sed -n
'10,36p'

spb-213-33-248-190.sovintel.ru /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
ext1.shape.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
server1.namsa.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
ns1.saclantc.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
bxlproxyb.europarl.eu.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
wdcsun18.usdoj.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
wdcsun21.usdoj.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
tcs-gateway11.treas.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
tcs-gateway13.treas.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
relay1.ucia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
relay2.cia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
relay2.ucia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
n021.dhs.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
legion.dera.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
gateway-fincen.uscg.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
crawler2.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
crawler1.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
gateway101.gsi.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
gate11-quantico.nmci.usmc.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
gate13-quantico.nmci.usmc.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
fw1-a.osis.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
crawler13.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
fw1-b.osis.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
bouncer.nics.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
beluha.ssu.gov.ua /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
zukprxpro02.zreo.compaq.com
/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052....


To be continued ....
HOLLYWOOD FL.... ATTA & Aris2Chatte
DENVER CO
ART STUDENTS...
MOOVERS INC.@IL

 

[john smith]

try scanning with adaware!

 

[kurt wismer]

(snip)


(snip)

Yep - just try playing an MS Zone game on Netscape!

there are plenty of online game sites that work perfectly well with
netscape...

 

[Bart Bailey]

...snip...

So, the fact that designers are too lazy to check their sites in more
than one browser becomes my problem? No.

If a site doesn't work in NS/MZ/Firefox and/or Opera then one should
complain. Therre isn't much one can do about private sites, but
commercial sites are pretty responsive. Designers might get lazy, but
you can bet that enough complaints will rouse their clients to demand
changes.

Just my two yen,

ts
(whose sites ALWAYS work in NS/Mz/Firefox and Opera)

There's one anti-Opera site that I know of whose designer's head is so
firmly cross-threaded up his ass that you get an admonishment if you
access it with Opera. Easy enough to dither the user agent your browser
reports, and the site works just fine with Opera.
http://www.nytimages.com/
It works with OB1 too, so it's not the lack of IE, but rather the report
of Opera that pisses in their cereal.

 

[Bart Bailey]

But the main one of course is Windows Update.

Without IE/OE, no one ever needs to go there,
With IE/OE, you might as well make it your start page. <g>

 

[Frederic Bonroy]

Without IE/OE, no one ever needs to go there,

Unless one uses masochistware like NAV that requires IE, so one is
unable to dump IE and just has to update it regularly.

With IE/OE, you might as well make it your start page. <g>

In order to this IE users would have to get rid of the obligatory
hijacker first. ;-)

 

[ted s.]

Without IE/OE, no one ever needs to go there,

Not true, if you use Windows.

 

[Casey]

(snip)

Yep - just try playing an MS Zone game on Netscape!

Dave, have you and Zebulon gone to Tools | Quick Preferences |
and selected Identify as MSIE 6.0.?
Casey