How do parallel private tabs share their information?

Hi all together,

I was wondering if private tabs share information between them, or if there is a way of keep each private tab really isolated. One reason to use private tabs is to smear out personal traces. Therefore, I would like if I could open a private tab for twitter, one for facebook, one for google+. But none of them actually gets to see the others cookies or does have any other information about I am being somewhere else. Is that possible at the moment already?

Another feature which I would enjoy enormously, would be to define such isolated tabs, which store cookies for a specific site (I do not need actually their history deleted or something, just want to prevent them from communicating with each other). And each of those tabs would contain my personal information for one of those sites. Say I just open the twitter with my "twitter tab", I would be logged in already. If I would open my twitter with my "facebook tab", twitter would not know who I am.

Thanks,

sthDifferent

I would think Opera's private browsing feature delivers the described functionality.

Thanks for your reply,

But I am not sure about this. because the description of private tabs just says that private data gets deleted after the tab is closed.

On the other hand, I can for instance log into my email account using a private tab. If I then open another private tab and just copy the URL of the opened mail account into the new private tab, I do not have to login again. This means that cookies of private tabs might be deleted after private tabs are closed, but while they are open they are floating around and are accessible from other tabs as well. I admit, this makes a lot of sense in many cases, but I would like to keep all data encapsulated just in a single private tab. Since opera has sometimes "hidden" features which have to be switched on in the config, I hoped it would be the case with private tabs as well.

The private tabs exist as part of a "universe" (cookies, etc.), which all of them share. The data of this "universe" is separate from the "universe" used by the the normal tabs. Opening new private tabs does not create new "universes"; there is at most two "universes" for surfing (widgets use additional separate "universes").

The private tabs "universe" does not store any information persistently, but all the information in the private tabs "universe" is available to the other private tabs as long as the "universe" is in existence. This means that, among other things, if you log into a site, e.g. google mail, then open another private tab to google mail, the new tab will also be logged into the same session as the first private tab, but this session will be different from the session used by a non-private tab. If you, for example log in to Facebook in a private tab, any site you visit in the private tabs that connect to Facebook will use the current Facebook session.

Think of private tabs as a second browser instance, one that does not store information persistently, without having to configure a new installation.

Thanks for that information!

Are there plans to make it possible to increase the number of "universes" or perhaps making "page-specific" universes? For instance to create a profile for twitter which I can open in a separate universe than my gmail or facebook? Because I would like to make those companies unaware that I am using different platforms with different pseudonyms. Different universes would be also very useful if one wants to use two separate accounts of the same page at the same time, for instance several topic specific twitter accounts.

Interesting. That means private browsing is not so private, from a web site's perspective.

I develop web sites for a living. A lot of time is spent configuring web based systems, requiring me to log in using various credentials. I've never considered using private tabs for this: to separate the credentials I've always used several browsers next to each other.

With Internet Explorer 7 and 8, a -nomerge command line switch was capable of separating browsing universes. With Chrome and Firefox, I can use the profile switches to get a similar result. I'm interested in seeing whether Opera sports a method to do the same.

Originally posted by yngve:

The private tabs exist as part of a "universe" (cookies, etc.), which all of them share. The data of this "universe" is separate from the "universe" used by the the normal tabs. Opening new private tabs does not create new "universes"; there is at most two "universes" for surfing (widgets use additional separate "universes").

The private tabs "universe" does not store any information persistently, but all the information in the private tabs "universe" is available to the other private tabs as long as the "universe" is in existence. This means that, among other things, if you log into a site, e.g. google mail, then open another private tab to google mail, the new tab will also be logged into the same session as the first private tab, but this session will be different from the session used by a non-private tab. If you, for example log in to Facebook in a private tab, any site you visit in the private tabs that connect to Facebook will use the current Facebook session.

Think of private tabs as a second browser instance, one that does not store information persistently, without having to configure a new installation.

Weird, it doesn't always work that way. I just opened a private tab and logged into google. Then opened a second private tab, and went to Google and was not logged in. So I logged in a secondary account. (I swear I've done this before) And had both emails up in two private tabs. So I opened up a 3rd private tab to see if I could log into a 3rd account, but the 2nd account followed. Now every time I try the 2nd tab follows the first tab (meaning 2nd tab shows it's already logged in as you say)

Has this always been the case with private tabs? I swear I remember using private tabs for just this reason, being able to login to multiple accounts at once. Now I can't do that obviously.

you can run Opera with -pd switch:

path\to\opera.exe -pd path\to\folder

If you're already in Opera folder, then starting

opera.exe -pd new1

will make a "new1" folder and store all settings there. And those who don't want to mess with command-line, can install Opera in different folders in "USB-installation" mode.

Hi,

Sorry to bump but I'm looking for this exact feature. It would be so handy.

Gmail in one tab. Anonymous Google Search in another, Facebook in another, random other site with hooks to google or fb in another tab.
Nothing inter communicating but still the functionality of the Opera tabbed interface. That would be real privacy IMHO.

Did you by chance suggest it as a feature? I couldn't find it. I'll second it if you did or suggest it if you did not.

Thanks,


Edit....

I found it more or less how I would see it working
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1180332

I also really prefer more real (unlimited) `private` tabs.
And an option to open bookmarks in private tabs by default.

My concern is merely being able to browse privately and save then that all data is deleted after closing Opera down, which is more an issue with shared machines.

See also here my former request:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=944252

Especially now every site is using Facebook Like buttons e.g. so they leak privacy data to Facebook, or (Google/Twitter).
It's really a privacy issue, now I use a mega url filter to filter out all social media scripts. Furthermore iframes aren't considered 3d party once you activate/click them, so not allowing 3rd party cookies doesn't help much either.

And sometimes, actually a lot, I need to login with more than 2 different Google accounts

Originally posted by alex-shpak:

you can run Opera with -pd switch:

path\to\opera.exe -pd path\to\folder

If you're already in Opera folder, then starting

opera.exe -pd new1

will make a "new1" folder and store all settings there. And those who don't want to mess with command-line, can install Opera in different folders in "USB-installation" mode.

That doesn't give you the wand, url_filter.ini or any bookmark.
Opening Firefox or Chrome is easier then.

@Yngve, What's the problem with creating more `universes`. Isn't Opera simply saving them to different folders? M2 works with a huge amount of folders, does it quite well.

This message is for developers of the best browser available "Opera" : Please make the private tabs to be really private , we need that each private tab to be created in an completely new session, each private tab should not share any cookies with the other tabs, so we can use multiple google / yahoo accounts in the same time, this is very important for many of opera users , thank you for your great job.