Security

The security preferences let you manage your security certificates, fine-tune security protocols, and be warned about insecure situations.

Tip: Read Opera's tutorial for an excellent introduction to protecting your personal information and security on the Internet.

Certificates

Certificate authorities are used to certify a site as secure. Most certificate authorities you need are installed with Opera.

Example: The secure version of the University of Oslo Web site is authorized by the Thawte organization.

Personal certificates, on the other hand, are used to identify you as the genuine user of a Web service. These are normally installed the first time you sign up for the service.

You can do the following things with your certificates:

You can be asked for confirmation when using particular certificates
You can disable a certificate, thereby disallowing connections to all sites certified by the certificate
You delete certificates you no longer wish to use

Note:

If you delete a personal certificate, you must create a new personal certificate to use the corresponding Web service
If you delete a certificate authority, you must reinstall Opera or download the certificate from the original provider to restore it

Security protocols

Security protocols are used to communicate securely with sites where sensitive data, such as credit card information, is involved.

Supported protocols include:

Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 - most secure
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) 3.0
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) 2.0

Tip: When visiting secure sites, the padlock icon on the Address bar turns into a security icon indicating the level of security on the site. Move your mouse over the security icon for detailed information.

To prevent connections to only the most secure sites, disable SSL and ciphers lower than 128 bits. If you experience problems on secure sites, try turning them back on.

Security password

A security password prevents other people from using your certificates, as long as you select a good password and keep it secret.

If your computer is accessible to other people choose to be asked for your security password every time you use certificates.

You can also use the security password to protect your e-mail and news passwords.

Security warnings

You can be warned about unintentionally submitting forms with sensitive data to an unsecure site. Submitting forms to search engines and open discussion forums is harmless.

You can be warned before using the on-line page validator to prevent you from unintentionally sending a sensitive document.

Learn more about security