We get a lot of push notifications a day, from email apps, to messaging apps, to games, banks, and more. So we’re sure that the last thing most of us want is to be bombarded with useless notifications from browsers like Chrome. Well, it looks like Google might have solved the problem, claiming to have prevented as many as 7 billion unwanted notifications a day in Chrome.
Chrome cuts 7 billion unwanted notifications
According to the Google Security blog, the company says that its anti-abuse systems have cut as many as 7 billion unwanted Chrome notifications per day in the first quarter of 2026. That’s honestly quite amazing, but also worrying that there are so many websites out there pushing notifications.
Google says the reason they’ve stepped up their defense is due to the abuse of its notification system. The company says that these notifications have been used to distribute scams, malware, fraudulent payment requests, and even phishing attempts. To solve this problem, Google developed what they’re calling the “Swiss cheese” defense model.
How does this work? Basically, the idea was to create a defense model that could catch abuse on multiple layers. As Google puts it, “Our goal is to ensure that if abuse slips through one layer, another is there to catch it. This approach allows us to halt abuse at the source, preventing deceptive content from reaching users while maintaining a healthy balance between utility and security.”
Learning from behavior patterns
But if that wasn’t enough, Google says Chrome is analyzing behavior across related websites. This means it won’t just block notifications from one bad actor, but potentially groups of bad actors. Google says this is based on various factors, like notification volume, time spent on a site, permission-prompt frequency, and engagement.
According to Google, “This enables us to proactively revoke permissions from these persistent bad actors, protecting users from deceptive notifications even when the site content might not seem inherently malicious.”
That being said, Google advises users to take control of notifications themselves as well. While Chrome does come with its own built-in security, Google says users can directly control notifications on their end. Users can find the notification settings in both the desktop app as well as the Android version of Chrome.
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