Opera not only makes mediocre browsers, but apparently predatory loan apps, too

Opera, the company behind Opera Browser, apparently has a few other things in their portfolio besides middling browsers. According to a new report, there are several predatory loan apps available on the Play Store, and many of them are linked to Opera or Opera executives in some way.

That's exactly what you want from your browser company. Borderline illegal payday loans. Neat.

Opera loses out to Chrome

This all started with Opera's market share (and revenue, by extension) declining in the age of Google Chrome. Chrome is easily the most recognizable and popular browser on the planet right now, even managing to pull some of their competitors into using Chromium's rendering engine and abandoning their own.

So with that in mind, of course it makes sense that fewer people are downloading Opera as their third-party browser of choice. The company has tried to branch out into things like gaming-focused browsers (???) and VPNs and whatever else, but it apparently hasn't really worked out so well for them. So their foolproof fallback? Loan apps that violate Google's Play Store policies!

So what exactly's going on here? Well, there are/were a few apps on the Play Store that offered small loans, except they had conflicting information and many details that Google didn't actually allow. Some of these apps said they allowed loan terms from 60ish days to a full year, but when emailed about Okash specifically the response claimed that they only offered loans up to 29 days. Google requires a 60-day minimum for these kinds of apps.

Sketchy apps

Two of the apps, namely Okash and OPesa, also took things a step further, according to Play Store reviews. These apps would harass users about payment due dates, and in some instances, the apps would even send texts and call the contacts in a user's phone threatening to send them to collections over unpaid loans. Pretty easy to see how Google wouldn't be happy with this living on the Play Store.

Ready to top everything off? The research company that was behind digging up all this information also found that the money was being moved around in incredibly sketchy ways. $9.5 million was moved to an entity that's 100% owned by Opera's CEO. The reason for that transaction was to purchase a company that was already owned by Opera, so that doesn't hold much water. That's not the only weird stuff going on, though.

$9.5 million of cash went toward an entity that appears to have been owned 100% by Opera’s Chairman/CEO, despite company disclosures suggesting otherwise. Ostensibly, the reason for the payment was to ‘purchase’ a business that was already funded and operated by Opera. To us, this transaction simply looks like a cash withdrawal.

$30 million of cash went into a karaoke app business owned by Opera’s Chairman/CEO, days before the arrest of a key business partner.

$31+ million of cash was doled out for “marketing expenses and prepayments” to an antivirus software company controlled by an Opera director and influenced by Opera’s Chairman/CEO. The antivirus company has no other known marketing clients, but is paid to help Opera with Google and Facebook ads and other marketing services. (Note: Most firms use a marketing agency for help with marketing needs.)

Needless to say, none of that looks good. Opera has responded saying that much of the information in the report was inaccurate or misleading, but this statement seems to be mostly made towards investors to save face. That's not to say that they're lying here, but the situation here just isn't great for Opera at all.

As always, be mindful of what you're pulling off of the Play Store. Even if this isn't malware, per se, it's still something you have to be careful about installing to your device, especially since it was calling device contacts without permission. That's not something anyone wants to deal with.

Read more: Hindenburg Research