Website notices They have become a recurring feature of many websites, who use this system for completely legitimate purposes and which were actually designed to provide superior service to their users. From last-minute information to notifications related to online services, they represent a unique improvement in terms of being able to inform users about what they want to be informed about.

browser warning they are very similar to notifications PUSH so present in mobile phones and in both types of notifications, it is necessary for the user to confirm in advance that he wishes to receive them. Additionally, even if we’ve previously enabled this type of communication for a site, we can easily reverse it… if we know where to do it, something we’ll explain a bit later.

The problem with notifications is that many users automatically confirm permission to receive them without realizing it browser alerts can be used with malicious intent. And as we can read in Cybernews, it is happening more and more often, to the point that it already deserves to be considered a threat that ordinary users should take into account.

The risk in this case is that an attacker can use the notification feature of the intended browser direct us to download malware, impersonate websites or even to legitimate sites that were the subject of a successful attack. From a message that informs us that our antivirus protection has expired, to another that tells us that we need to sign in to a certain service, or even that we need to download and install an update to the operating system or browser… not to mention that they can also be used to bombard us with unwanted advertisingsomething goes

The most problematic thing is that in addition these permissions They are not associated with a specific browser installation, but with our user account. This means that if we confirm a notification for a website in a browser instance on a PC and later use the same account with the same browser on another computer, on this last one the notifications that we authorized on another system will continue to be active.

So, if at any time a suspicious message appears through the browser notification, the first thing we will have to do is find out which website it came from and then go to your browser’s notification permission settings to block notifications from this site. And how do you get to that section? You’ll just have to type (or copy) these URLs into your browser’s address bar and hit Enter.

• Google Chrome: chrome://settings/content/notifications
• Microsoft Edge: the edge://settings/content/notifications
• Mozilla Firefox: about: preferences #privacy

Notifications are, as I said at the beginning, a legitimate feature that has many examples of good use. So don’t take this as an amendment as a whole, but as a warning to keep an eye out for any suspicious notification, as cybercriminals have already taken note.