Security Preferences
In this menu, you can change the security settings for your Opera to comply with your
Internet security wishes. Although they might appear confusing and daunting at first, most
settings are actually easy to figure out once you have a little bit of background information,
and should present no major obstacle. Keep in mind, though, that editing these settings without
knowing the impact may result in error messages when you connect to secure sites.
Certificates
The first part of this menu deals with certificates. "Certificates" in this context, means
a digitally signed data records with information either about an Internet user, which is a personal certificate, or the one with the authority to sign the certificate,
commonly referred to as the Certificate Authority.
Clicking on the "Personal..." button will take you to the Personal
Certificates menu, and clicking the "Authorities..." button will take you to the Certificate Authorities menu.
Please see the instructions on installing certificates further below.
Security Protocols
In this part of the menu, you are able to select which security protocols your Opera should
enable for use on the Internet. Opera supports SSL v2, its successor SSL v3 and its successor TLS 1.0, which make up the de
facto standards for security on the Internet today. All of these protocols are enabled by default,
and can be selectively disabled as per your wishes.
To the right of the protocol names, you'll find two buttons, "Configure v2..." and "Configure
v3 and TLS...", which, when pressed, will take you to the menus where you can configure SSL v2
and configure SSL v3, respectively.
Password
Seeing as Opera is an Internet browser with security features that offer up to 128-bit
encryption, an important and often overlooked threat to your personal security is the
use of Opera by others with access to the same machine. Opera solves this, if you'll let it,
by letting you set a security password that prevents others from using your security features.
Note! The password this section of the menu refers to only protects
sensitive information for your local copy of Opera: Your personal certificates and your password
for the internal e-mail client in Opera, if applicable.
In order to set a security password, press the button named "Set password..." in this part
of the menu. You will then be presented with a dialog for typing in a password. Type in
anything you want, but remember these two "golden rules":
A password should be obscure, as long as necessary, and it should have a
mixture of alphabetic charachter, both small and large case, numbers and
other characters; the more, the merrier. With todays efficiency at breaking
keys by brute computer force a moderately secure password should be 10 random characters
or more, a really secure more than 20 random characters (change characters
to words if you are using readable words). And of course you should be able
to remember the password, and not write it down on paper or anything else.
Never select the birthdays or the name(s) of your wife, husband,
girl-/boyfriend, children, parents, favorite artist or TV-character or movie, your dog or cat,
words that are in the any kind of dictionaries by themselves, or citations from literature;
If somebody want to break your password (or any password) they will not just have these
items and more on hand, they will use them automatically.
Pressing the "OK" button will confirm your selection, while pressing "Cancel" will
exit the dialog, discarding your entered password.
Note! One of the most important things about keeping passwords secure
is that you'll need to remember it in your head - writing it down on a Post-it™ and sticking
it under your computer monitor or keyboard will not suffice. Should you lose your password, there
is no way to get it back, neither from your copy of Opera nor from Opera Software
AS, so make sure you remember what it is, and never ever forget it.
Following the creation of a password comes the options on when to use it. Choose between
having to enter the password once per session Opera is active or whenever it is necessary, as you
wish. This setting can be changed later.
Show an alert before
The very nature of the HTTP protocol is that it does not contain any way of encrypting data
sent through forms on the Internet in itself, only through the use of the SSL or TLS protocols to
form the HTTPS protocol. This process is lengthy and complicated, and relatively unnecessary for
most of the information that is sent through the Internet every day, exemplified by on-line search
services and engines.
This information can be read by anyone that wish to do so, and who knows how to do it, which
may not be what the user of the Web browser in question wants, so therefore Opera will prompt
you with a warning message whenever you do send information through an insecure form. If you want
to disable this warning message, uncheck the box labeled "Sending a form insecurely".