Earlier this month, Google released Chrome 86 for desktop, Android, and iOS with a few new feature additions. In a new post on Chromium blog, the company says the update has also improved the notifications system to avoid potential abuse.
The feature builds on quiet notification permission UI introduced in Chrome 80. With Chrome 84, Google started auto-enrolling websites with abusive notification permission requests. In Chrome 86, the browser blocks requests if a website is known to abuse notifications in order to spread malware or make a phishing attempt. Users will have to explicitly click on the Allow button to permit notifications on such websites.
“Abusive notification prompts are one of the top user complaints we receive about Chrome. Our goal with these changes is to improve the experience for Chrome users and to reduce the incentive for abusive sites to misuse the web notifications feature,” says Google.
Behind the scenes, Google is using its automated web crawling service to detect abusive notification content. The notifications sent to these automated Chrome instances will go through the company’s Safe Browsing technology for further evaluation and detection.
If the system detects that your website is using abusive notifications, Search Console will send an email with a month’s deadline for enforcement. You can follow the official guide on Search Console help center to resolve the situation. Once you have fixed it, you will have to request a review for your website.
Apart from this change, Chrome will revert notification permissions from “granted” to “default” for abusive websites that already have necessary permissions. However, this feature is not available in Chrome 86 and will go live in a future release of Chrome.
