Today I read CNET’s coverage of the Opera 10 “Unite” service. To save you going to the link, the Opera developers decided that it would be a lot better for you to share your content with the world via your web browser rather than a third-party service like YouTube or Flickr. It does this by running a web server on your PC which other users access across the Internet. When I read this, I was immediately struck by several thoughts and questions:
- Why? Maybe if this was 1995, I could see the point of Opera Unite. Today, with well-known and (arguably) good services like YouTube, Flickr, and others out there, what’s the point of serving your media yourself? Why take the risk of opening your personal computer to the Internet, regardless of how careful and secure you are? If people really wanted to share their own content directly from their own PCs, wouldn’t a “real” web server like Apache make more sense? Maybe within a corporate intranet there might be some value to this, but even there, most companies have central servers for doing this sort of thing and would probably prefer not to have end user desktops doing ths sharing.
- What about security? CNET makes a point of mentioning that security experts are already concerned about Opera Unite. They have plenty of good reason. The only real protection in Opera Unite is based on passwords, and certain ways of sharing information put those passwords “in the clear” where anyone can read them. When asked if someone could get to resources on your PC that you didn’t explicitly share, an Opera spokeswoman said “Definitely not — unless they’re a hacker.” I wasn’t too worried that my friends and family would go looking for unauthorized data on my PC. It’s the hackers I’m worried about. Those are the ones who commit blackmail, fraud, and identity theft with your data. Your friends and family, not so much.
- What about that “whole new class of social services”? Opera Unite is supposedly extensible, allowing third parties to create plug-in modules to add functionality to it. Even if Opera itself is bulletproof, what are the odds all those third-party modules will be?
The Opera web browser itself, I like. It’s relatively light on resources, reasonably quick, seems to do a good job displaying web pages, etc. I’m not against people using it. Opera Unite, on the other hand, concerns me. It’s basically turning everyone who uses it into a web server administrator, without the requisite training in security. If it offers something you think you really need, then by all means go ahead and use it. But if you want my advice, I’d steer clear until it’s had a chance to prove itself in the real world.
If you really need your own web presence, look into third party web hosting. Some providers, like Godaddy.com, are relatively inexpensive and can provide the tools and expertise you need to get your content online without having to risk opening your personal computer up to the world. If you need absolute control over your content and want to host it on a box that belongs to you, at least invest in a separate machine to serve that content so that your personal data isn’t at risk if that machine is compromised.