How To Stop Website Notifications Spam

Are you seeing alerts at the top right corner of your Mac's screen warning you about an "infection" or other problem? These are just website notifications spam, not a virus or malware. You were tricked into agreeing to receive these from a deceptive website. You can easily remove these notifications.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. No you don't have a virus or malware. All you have is Notifications' spam and it is easy to get rid or. 
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Now looking in forums online you can see a lot of people that think they may have a virus or malware on their Mac because they see these messages at the top right corner of their screen. They appear here under Notifications. You can see it appear here or sometimes it just pops out by itself. Here I've got one for Reminders. But what a lot of people see is one that either has a Safari icon and it claims that they've got some sort of virus or malware or it's been detected, or they see a macOS or a Settings icon. Here's some examples of posts of this. You can see somebody showing one and it looks like it is a Settings icon here and it shows that the Mac System is infected. Another example they show is this virus can be damaged. It is not even correct grammar. Here's another example here. Somebody took a screenshot on the side and you can see a whole list of these Notifications all with the system settings icon. Here's another one with a system settings icon with a little badge with a 1 in it to the top right. Here's another one somebody took a picture again and you could see the system settings icon used like that. It is not always the System Settings Icon. But it is a very common thing to have. 
So the deal here is that the messages that appear in the Notification Center or by themselves, they just slide over, have the icon of either the app or the website that is sending out the notification. So notice I said there are two things that can send out notifications here. Apps or Websites. Many years ago both Apple and Safari and Goggle and Chrome allowed websites to send you notifications. Now they can't just send you notifications. You have to agree to it. You have to sign-up for that. But websites like to trick you into doing this. If you end up at a website that's not above board they might trick you into doing it and then send you false notifications all in hopes that you'll click on them and maybe go and sign-up for something they've got or maybe download something that is in fact real malware. But all you're seeing when you get this message is just a message from them. It's easy to turn these notifications Off. 
So what you want to do is in Safari, go to Safari and then Settings. In older version of Safari it is Preferences. Then you want to go to Websites. This is where it is tricky because you would think maybe this is under Security or Privacy. But any setting that is controlled on a website for website basis is under Websites. You could see a whole bunch of different things here. Control Reader options, content blockers, video autoplay, all of that, for each individual website. If you scroll down this list there is Notifications. So you can control whether or not a website can send you notifications. 
Now the only sites you're going to see here are either sites that you're currently at, like they are in some open tab, or sites you previously visited and you've given permission or specifically denied permission for them to show you notifications. So in this case I see three different sites here. You can see how I've allowed notifications for each one of those. So here is where you're going to find those sites that you've accidentally  allowed notifications for. You could simply change the setting for that site from Allowed to Deny to turn Off those notifications. Or you can select the website and simply click Remove to completely remove it. That resets it which means it acts like you've never been to that website before so you won't get those notifications anymore either. 
Now notice there is a checkbox here for Allow Websites To Ask For Permission To Send Notifications. Well, if you turn that Off then websites can no longer request this. So you can't accidentally approve websites asking for notifications whether where they are going to send you fake junk. Let's look at how this works in practice. I'm going to go to this one here and I'm going to remove it. I'm going to keep this turned On. Let's go to that site. Okay, so here I am. You notice that it gives me this Alert here at the top asking if I want to subscribe to their notifications. It doesn't actually even say notifications. It just says recent updates. So now the default is Allow over Cancel and it's very easy to just think it is asking for permission to, say, cookies or just saying some disclaimer about the website. Then you click Allow. But look what happens now. I get this official looking dialogue here. This is what you get when you turn off that checkbox. So that first thing, that will always be there when you first go to the website. This second thing will not appear if you uncheck this in your website settings under Notifications. I mention this because often people say, hey I've unchecked that box yet websites are still pestering me for permission to allow them to send notifications. They are always going to pester you with that first alert there because that is something they create on their own website. But this second alert here that allows you to actually grant them permission, that will be prevented if you have that box unchecked. 
Now, if I click Don't Allow here you can see here the site appears in the list because I've given it a specific setting but it is set to Deny. Note another place that you can control which notifications you get is if you go into System Settings from the Apple Menu and then you click on Notifications here and you can see a list of Apps. But, in with the apps are also websites. You can select one here and you can control how the notifications appear in greater detail. You can turn it Off here, like that, or set it to None but, of course, if it's truly spam then you probably want to go into Safari and actually remove it from the list instead. 
The other thing to keep in mind is you can see the little icons here for each of the sites. So for these sites that are going to pester you with fake spam they are going to go and set their icon to something like a System Setting's icon to try to fool you into thinking it is your system sending the notification and not some website. One way you can tell where a notification comes from is if you bring up the notification and you Control Click on it, two-finger click on a trackpad, right click on a mouse, and then you get this little Context Menu. At the top of the Context Menu it tells you the origin of the notification. The app name or the website name. Although the website name, of course, is determined by the website owner so they could put something in there that deceives you into thinking it is a system notification or something like that as well. 
So if you want to prioritively want to check for these before you get any spam, just go in Safari, into Settings, and look under websites, and then Notifications on the left and see which websites you've allowed to send you notifications. Select any that you just don't want to receive notifications from or you don't remember approving. Select them and Remove and leave the ones where you specifically have decided to get notifications from. 
If you're using other browsers they have this functionality as well. So, for instance, if you use Chrome, go into Chrome and then Settings and then go to Privacy & Security and then Site Settings. Then scroll down and here you'll find Notifications. Here you will find the default settings for this. If you've allowed any sites they would be listed here just like they are in Safari. 
So there's how to get rid of the Notification's spam you may be getting to try and fool you into thinking you've got some sort of virus or malware or other emergency. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 5 Responses to “How To Stop Website Notifications Spam”

Ingrid Prosser

1 year ago

Thank you for this video - you saved my sanity!😊

Dave Taenzer

Very helpful! Thanks.

Tim A.

Do these notifications require that Safari be open/active?

Gary Rosenzweig

Tim: No. You can get notifications for apps that are not currently running.

Comments Closed.

How To Stop Website Notifications Spam

Comments: 5 Responses to “How To Stop Website Notifications Spam”

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