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bradley13 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Ok, soylentils, tell me I am behind the times. I have just discovered notifications in browsers [mozilla.org]. At first glance, I find them pretty horrifying.

For anyone else who somehow missed the train: notifications allow websites to pop-up information, even if you are not visiting the web site. I discovered this when I logged into Facebook for the first time in a couple of years. Up came a little window asking for permission to show notifications, and I stupidly clicked "yes". The next day, I open my browser to the usual IXQuick start-page, and...up pops a Facebook dialog.

The newest version of notifications about to come out will show you notifications even if you don't have your browser open [theverge.com]. So: your browser will constantly be active in the background, and some unknown number of websites are constantly active in the browser - in particular, the newest Chrome on Android.

I'm of the old school: a program should execute only when I tell it to, and should do only what I ask of it. Notifications seem like they are predestined to be a path for spyware and possibly malware. Am I overly paranoid? Opinions?

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