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Push Notifications

Fig. 1: Notification from calendar.google.com Fig. 2: Notification from pushwelcome.com

Google Chrome has a feature that allows websites to push notifications to you, creating a pop-up notification on your computer. This can be helpful when the pop-up is being used to notify you about an upcoming meeting you have scheduled, or new incoming emails as seen in figure 1. But unfortunately the same technology can be used to push ads, that we inadvertently approved as seen in figure 2.

If you look carefully at the two examples above, you will see that both list the website that is being allowed to notify you. In the “Meeting Notification” example, it has the website “calendar.google.com”, while the advertising one has “pushwelcome.com”.

How To Change the Setting

If you find you are getting notifications you don't want, you can go into Chrome's settings page and either remove the permission or change the permission to block all notifications.

  1. Open Chrome, and paste the following into the address bar. chrome://settings/content/notifications
    1. Another way to get to the same page, you can click on menu button, choose “Settings”, and go to “Site Settings” and then “Notifications” Fig. 3: Chome Settings for Notifications
  2. Here you will see a list of sites that you have already set to “Block” and a list of sites that you have set to “Allow”.
  3. Scroll through the “Allow” list and look for the site who is sending unwanted notifications.
  4. Click on the dots on the far right to bring up the option to Block, Edit, or Remove. Fig. 4: Change Setting for Specific Site

The three options:

  • Block: This will actively block any notifications from the specific website. Use this if the website is definitely one you don't want to see things from again.
  • Edit: This allows you to edit the website address. It is rare that you will ever choose this option.
  • Remove: This will remove them from your allow list, and you will stop getting pop-up notifications. But you could be asked again sometime in the future to allow notifications from this website. Use this option if you are unsure about wanting notifications, but you do know/trust the site.