Desktop and mobile push notifications from your web browser are a great way to keep yourself up to date with all that is important to you. By signing up for notifications from your favorite websites, you give them permission to bring you all the latest and greatest news and updates direct to your PC or mobile, even when your web browser isn’t open.

Whether you want to stay up to date with all the latest news about apps, software, tech, games, and more like you can with Softonic push notifications or if you want updates any of the thousands of other legitimate websites offering push notification updates, you have the power. You give permission for the site to send you notifications, you receive the notifications, and then if you’re interested in whatever that notification is talking about, you can open the link, or if not, you dismiss it. Easy.

The problem, though, is that illegitimate sites will try to get in on the action, too. Yes, we’re talking about spam . Just like with emails, telephone calls , SMS messaging, and pretty much every other form of communication ever invented, push notifications are also subject to attempts to fill our lives with spam.

If you allow the wrong sites to send you push notifications, you will end up receiving a lot of spam messages on your PC or phone

Push notification spam is all about permissions . Whenever you visit a site you like that offers push notifications, it will ask your permission to send you notifications in the future. Without this permission, sites can’t send you anything. Trouble is, we don’t only visit sites we’re happy to receive updates from and there are plenty of disreputable sites out there looking to make their owners a quick buck.

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These dark sites are now utilizing push notifications as a way to bombard us with spam. A report by Bleeping Computer shows the types of tactics used to coerce users to sign up for push notifications they don’t want to receive. These include blocking the site content unless you click “Allow” on the push notification permission button, and creating specialized website messages that urge you to enable push notifications before you can access the website’s services. Any users who hit the “allow” button are bombarded with spam message after spam message promising everything from free cash to unbelievable celebrity gossip.

Image via: Bleeping Computer

The guys at Mozilla are all too aware of this push notification spam problem and they’re now introducing a test to see what will happen if it removes push notification subscription prompts altogether. The test is running on Firefox now; it began April 1 and will end April 29. The main section of the test will put the onus on Firefox users to allow sites to send them push notification subscription messages in by clicking on an icon in the address bar. Unless they take the action shown below, users will not see any push notification subscription messages.

Via: Mozilla

The issue for Mozilla is that whereas only 3% of users accept these subscription requests, 19% of users leave a site as soon as they see the request. There could be an argument that the subscription messages themselves are having an adverse effect on browsing behavior.

Once the test is over, Mozilla will use the data to decide how it will treat push notifications in the future. It could set it so that you have to activate push notification permission requests yourself by default, which would mean you’d never see them unless you changed the setting.

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Whatever your relation to push notifications, this news could prove significant in the future. Push notifications can be annoying if you’re getting them from the wrong websites, but as long as you keep on top of your subscriptions, they can provide a great way to stay up to date with the things that matter to you most. This means as long as you know how to unsubscribe to the sites you don’t want to receive notifications from , there is no reason push notifications can’t be the useful tool they’re supposed to be. If Firefox decides to cut off permission requests altogether, it could be a case of cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face.

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