In order to help prevent phishing attacks and other malicious activities, Opera displays security warnings when you enter a suspicious site. The warnings take the form of security badges, which are small icons on the left side of your browser’s address bar that indicate security details about the page being viewed. Here is a brief description of what they mean:
This badge means that the connection between you and the website is private, because it’s encrypted (TLS). This badge only appears when the two following conditions are met:
- The site uses https protocol.
- The certificate is valid – meaning it’s up-to date and was signed by a trusted organization (more details below).
Your connection is not secure. It’s advised that you leave the website as soon as possible. Most importantly, this badge means you should not enter any personal information or any credentials on that page. However, if you believe the domain name is valid, check the spelling of the protocol in the address bar and try to change http:// to https://, if possible.
Security certificates
When you visit a site that uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) protocol, the website server uses a certificate to identify itself to browsers, like Opera. While anyone could create a certificate claiming to be whatever website they want, it’s the signature on the certificate that’s most important. To eliminate fake certificates signed on their own by someone, browsers check the provider of the signature. There are databases full of well-known organizations whose certificates are usually legitimate.
Nevertheless, publicly-known issuers and their certificates are constantly validated against a number of security and identity checks. Opera will warn you if some part of a publicly-known issuer’s certificate is questionable. In those cases, you can choose to proceed but Opera cannot guarantee your security.
When the data-saving mode is on, the certificate will state “Opera Turbo CA”. This is because the Opera turbo proxy is being used while in that mode.