Why Opera Browser is Using Webcam?
#security#privacy#discuss
Yaser Al-Najjar

Yaser Al-Najjar @yaser

About: Software Architect

Location:
Stockholm, Sweden
Joined:
May 6, 2018

Why Opera Browser is Using Webcam?

Publish Date: Oct 17 '19
10 5

I realized many times that Kaspersky is warning me whenever I open Opera browser that it starts using the webcam!

opera cam

Opened pages

All are usual pages that do NOT require webcam functionalities, like: Asana, ZenHub, Twitter, Facebook... etc

Plugins

I checked my plugins, and it's kinda empty just those:

  1. Install Chrome Extensions (by Opera Software).
  2. Opera Ad Blocker (official plugin form Opera).
  3. WordWeb Dictionary Lookup.

Why I use Opera?

Well, it's super light (memory and CPU) comparing to Google Chrome.

But I recently feel really concerned about why it uses the camera without showing any permission dialog.

I hope to see where I'm wrong at this.

Comments 5 total

  • Austin S. Hemmelgarn
    Austin S. HemmelgarnOct 17, 2019

    Most likely one of those sites is probing your webcam for what formats it supports as a way to fingerprint your device. It's technically a privacy issue (because it can often be used combined with other data to uniquely identify a particular device), but it isn't something that actually requires capturing any video or images, so many browsers don't actually prompt you about it (for example, Chrome does not prompt for this type of access even when you have it configured to ask you before letting sites use your camera).

    • Yaser Al-Najjar
      Yaser Al-NajjarOct 19, 2019

      I'm not sure why it ain't asking me though it's set to "ask before access":

      opera-set-ask-me

      • Austin S. Hemmelgarn
        Austin S. HemmelgarnOct 20, 2019

        Again, given that it's technically not actually using the camera by most definitions (it's like asking for a menu at a restaurant, you're not actually a patron of the restaurant until you order food, and you technically can walk out before even ordering anything after just looking at the menu), a lot of browsers just don't prompt about it, even if configured to ask before access.

        A lot of security software though takes a very pessimistic view on hardware access though, and considers anything that access a piece of hardware at all (even if it's just to ID the hardware) to be 'using' that hardware.

        • Yaser Al-Najjar
          Yaser Al-NajjarOct 20, 2019

          The restaurant analogy is neat 😁

          Thanks for the clarification, Austin... very appreciated!

  • Paweł Kowalski
    Paweł KowalskiOct 17, 2019

    Ive had to switch from opera. Constant crashes and memory leaks forced me to switch to Firefox. Couldnt be happier.

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