“Opera Unite service opens a door to the PC”

Of course they’re not “reinventing” anything; they’re just adding yet another kitchen sink to their application, because the success of Netscape Communicator has demonstrated that’s what people want of their browsers.

A spokeswoman for Opera confirmed to ZDNet UK on Tuesday that there is no encryption involved in the Opera Unite. Asked whether the platform could be used by someone to access data on the host’s PC that the host had not chosen to share, the spokeswoman said: "Definitely not — unless they’re a hacker."

Uh… huh. I sure hope that Opera’s engineers are more responsible than their PR department. (But I wouldn’t bet on it, if there’s no encryption in the first place.)

Opera’s spokeswoman said that if a user was found to be distributing copyrighted material, Opera would ask the user to remove the content and, if the person did not comply, would block the account. "This would only happen if the matter was brought to Opera’s attention, as Opera does not monitor your data," the spokeswoman added.

Oh, yeah, that’s gonna work great, too.