How To Block And Prevent Push Notification Spam?

Push Notification Blocking
Push Notification Blocking

In modern time the first thing a person does after waking up is to check their phone for a new message, email or other notification.

These banners that contain a short message from your installed application or a website, which appear on top of your devices’ screen are known as Push Notifications.

The notification you receive from the social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook, etc are all pushed notifications. They have become a method of customer relationship management, enabling apps like Zomato and OYO to directly make communication to their potential customers.

Mobile push notification

They look similar to the text messages but are different. Many times, it happens that after installing an app we forget about it. So, push notifications are a great way of re-engagement. Clicking on it will bring you to the app that you forgot to use after installing it.

Other than this, companies also use push notifications for the promotional services or any announcement.

Basically, the main purpose of the push notification is to prompt the user to open the app or the website.

What is Push Notification Spam?

Since it is getting a lot of engagements and popularity, push notifications are now being used by the scammers or hackers for phishing out your personal information and spamming you with useless ads.

They cleverly frame the notifications in such a way that it seems purely legit. They will pop a fake security warning with the name and logo of an official app. The victims think that the warning is real and they are prompt to tap on the notification where they are redirected to a phishing webpage asking for their personal details.

Recently, “Click Allow” popup has gained huge popularity. This feature was introduced by the web-browsers so that users can get notification of the new content published on their favourite website. But they are more used by the spam websites and cyber-criminals. Users are notified of irrelevant ads and news.

How to Prevent Push Notifications Spam?

It is rightly said that prevention is better than cure. So, to prevent yourself from the push notification scam, first, you have to understand how the apps and websites take permission to send you the push notification.

In the case of mobile application, whenever you install any app, you automatically provide your permission to send the push notifications.

However, it is different for websites. This is how it works for them.

First, it will ask for permission. Whenever you visit a new website with the push notification, an opt-in box is triggered. If you click on ‘allow’ you are added to its subscriber list. As soon as you become its subscriber the website will start sending you the push notifications.

Do Not Click or Tap on Allow Button To Prevent Push Notification

This is where you have to be attentive. Before giving the permissions to the websites, first, you should check whether it has any relevancy for you or not. You should also check for the authenticity of that website.

Blindly allowing any sort of website to send you notification is risky and your device becomes vulnerable to the malicious activities. You can only prevent website push notification scam by not opting-in to unknown sites.

However, sometimes you may have not allowed any website but then also you are getting the notifications from them. The reason for this may be because your device is infected with some malware such as browser hijacker or a browser redirect.

To prevent push notification scam from mobile app, always download your apps from verified sites or play store.

How to Block Push Notifications?

If you by mistakenly have permitted any website to show push notifications you can easily block them by following a few simple steps.

Steps to Block Push Notifications on Chrome

Step 1: Open the Chrome browser and click on Settings.

or just go to chrome browser and type chrome://settings/

Chrome Settings

Step 2: Scroll down to the “Advanced” option and open it.

Step 3: Under Advanced options look for the “Site Settings” and open it.

Step 4: Now look for the “Notifications” option under Site Settings.

Step 5: Now from here you can ‘allow’ or ‘block’ the sites for Push Notifications.

Steps to Block Push Notifications from an Android Application

Step 1: Open the App Info of the Application for which you want to block Push Notifications and look for “Notifications” option

Step 2: Unselect the “Allow Notifications” option

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