Do you ever feel that when you're browsing on the internet, you're being bombarded with things other people want you to see? As well as having to click on permissions for cookies and tracking, we now have many websites asking for permission to send notifications. Many of these notifications are a pain, although they are harmless - news updates, latest product releases, new videos etc - some are just spam. It can be very distracting to receive all these notifications from different sources and it’s making us less productive at work. As well as just being outright annoying.
All this has a name, it's called 'notification spam', and it is becoming a problem. According to Google, notification spam is one of the top complaints from people using their Chrome browser. So finally, Google has decided to do something about it!
Back in October 2020, Google first acted on harmful notifications by exposing websites that misled people into giving permission. It created its own prompts to warn people the website may have malicious intent. Google is now planning on taking things a step further if it feels that the website is 'abusive' or 'disruptive'.
Google will revoke these websites’ permission to send notifications and will even block attempts to request permission. Even if you’ve accidentally allowed a malicious site to send notifications, Chrome will be able to step in and block the alerts. Google is moving in the right direction by trying to reduce the amount of spam we are exposed to on the internet. However, it’s not clear yet how Google will define websites as 'abusive' or 'disruptive'. We are waiting to hear more on this. Google has explained that this new feature works to strengthen its ‘Developer Terms of Service’ that pledge not to use the company’s API to send any form of spam. It shouldn’t affect the majority of websites but instead should go some way to keeping your Chrome notifications spam-free.
We don't have any information on when this new feature will be released as the development has only just started, but we are hoping to hear from Google soon with a release date!
As always, if you’d like any further advice on protecting yourself from spam and other productivity killers, get in touch with us!
Until next time, keep fit and have fun!
(TYYV) The Yada Yada Version:
Spam notifications suck! They are annoying and disruptive. Thankfully Google is hoping to step in and save the day with their Spam notification block and yada yada yada we are hoping it will be released soon!
