Opera Mini, your phone number, and privacy

I have a question about Opera's Privacy Statement: it says that Opera Mini will not store the user's phone number "except where required by the operator". Who is the "operator"? The operator of the phone? The people operating the cellular phone service? The software operating the web browser? Why would the "operator" require Opera to store phone numbers? This is such an ambiguous statement that it makes me wonder. Since Opera makes their money from deals they cut with advertisers, I could see data tied to individual users via their telephone number as an identifier being extremely valuable.

A follow up question is why does Opera need to access the user's phone number in the first place? The sentence uses the word "store", which implies that the phone number was sought by Opera. You don't have the option to store or not store something if you have not obtained it in the first place.

Opera seems to be a company that is committed to privacy, and I would like to use their products on both my mobile and desktop, however they are still a company and they still have the responsibilities of making sure their employees get fed at night.

Originally posted by livingsilver:

Who is the "operator"?

In short the company you pay for your SIM-card based facilities like Internet, SMS, calling, 3G Video conferencing is called the operator (also known mobile network operator). For example of operators - Vodafone, MTN, Airtel, Reliance, Telenor etc.

Originally posted by livingsilver:

Why would the "operator" require Opera to store phone numbers?

Because some mobile network operators like Vodafone and MTN (and some others I don't know of) provide modified versions of Opera Mini to their customers. Since mobile network operators have their own privacy policies - Opera Software ASA can't be 100% sure that none of these 'modified' versions of Opera Mini store phone numbers; it depends on the mobile network operator.

I am not exactly sure whether I am right or not, but hopefully most of the above part is right.

That makes sense. I hope you're right. I'm always uncomfortable when my phone number is associated with my "aggregate" data.