Just want to stop a notification?
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Notifications from websites
Web browsers have a facility
for websites to proactively alert you to things. On Windows, these
notifications appear in the bottom right corner of
the screen; on Mac, they appear in the top right.
A website must first ask your permission to show notifications. If you
agree, it can do so whenever it likes — even after you quit the browser or
you’re busy working on other things.
You might find it useful to allow notifications from a select few sites, to
be informed of things like:
- Arrival of new email
- Updates on social media
- Breaking news
But some websites send too many notifications. And worse, bogus websites
abuse the facility to pretend you’ve got
malware and offer unneeded and potentially harmful ‘help’.
So, if a site asks to show notifications, think about whether you really
want them before agreeing.
Stop a site showing notifications
If you’ve already agreed to notifications you don’t want:
- Click the menu ⋮ (three dots, top right).
- Click Settings.
- In the sidebar (left) click Privacy and security.
- To the right, click Site settings.
- Click Notifications (you might need to scroll down a
bit).
- Find the ‘Allowed to send notifications’ section.
- Click the menu ⋮ next to each unwanted site and choose
Remove.
- Click the menu ⋮ (three dots, top right).
- Click Settings.
- In the sidebar (left) click Cookies and site
permissions.
- To the right, click Notifications (you might need to scroll
down a bit).
- Find the ‘Allow’ section.
- Click the menu ⋮ next to each unwanted site and choose
Remove.
How did it happen?
People often ask me: why am I getting notifications I don’t remember
agreeing to? Of course I can’t be sure, because I’m only there after the
fact, but my guess is that modern life is giving us all a form of
alarm fatigue.
In particular, since it became law for websites to explain their use of
cookies, we have become worryingly used to
clicking ‘I agree’ without always knowing what we’re agreeing to.
In other words, I think people agree to notifications under the mistaken
impression they’re agreeing to cookies, or that the website won’t work
otherwise.