We’ve recently reported Mozilla may make user interaction a mandatory requirement in Firefox 68 for websites to request permissions from users to display notification prompt, Mozilla today officially announced that they’ll conduct experiments in Nightly and release channel to address notification abuse by websites.
Mozilla says in their blog post the setting they launched in Firefox already helps users to opt out of receiving notifications from websites, but users may not aware of these Notification Settings, that’s why the company is exploring new methods to solve notification spam issue.
Mozilla to run tests to lower the Push Notification permissions spam in Firefox browser
The first experiment runs on Nightly from April 1st to April 29 in 2019 where Nightly 68 requires user gesture, means, a click or keystroke needs to be pressed by the user for a website to request for permission prompt, otherwise, Firefox browser automatically denies website requests that that asks permission for notification prompt.
In the first two weeks of the experiment, Firefox doesn’t show any notifications to users from websites restricted this way, however, in the last two weeks of experiment period, the browser will show an animated icon (where notification prompt usually appear) to allow users to see and access notifications restricted on websites this way.
Experiment 2: Mozilla to run an experiment in Firefox 67 release channel (scheduled to release on May 14, 2019) on a small percentage of release users to measure their engagement with sites and how they react to notification prompts, how much time they spent on site, have they rejected permission prompts before or not? Which may help them study and implement better restrictions on notification prompts in the upcoming Firefox versions.
This could take a long time, meanwhile, to block notifications by websites right away,
Launch Firefox browser,
1. Click on menu > Options >Privacy & Security
2. Permissions > Notifications,
3. Click Settings, ‘check ‘ new requests asking to show notifications”
You can do the same for websites that request permission to access Camera, Geolocation, and Microphone also.
Related articles:
Firefox 64 gets Windows 10 Notifications Support
Firefox 44: Mozilla adds Do Not Disturb button for Notifications in Nightly