If you use Edge and have ever tapped “Allow” on a page that said it needed to check you are not a robot, the browser can now clean up after you. Since Edge 156, a site that sends a scam through a notification loses its notification permission automatically.
Microsoft has also added a “Block and report” choice to the permission prompt, so you can flag a suspicious page before it sends anything.
How the automatic block works
Microsoft describes the change in a post on the Edge blog. When Microsoft Defender SmartScreen or Edge’s Scareware blocker decides that a scam was delivered by a notification, Edge cuts off that site’s notification permission. At the next launch, a bar at the top of the browser tells you what was blocked and why.
If Edge got it wrong, you can open Edge Settings, look through the sites whose notifications were blocked and unblock the one you trust.
Edge 156 began rolling out last month, according to the blog post.
Reporting from the prompt
Notification scams usually begin with a page that pushes you to press “Allow”, often behind a fake robot check. In Edge, open the menu beside “Block” on that prompt and choose “Block and report”. The report can include the page’s address and a screenshot of the page that pressed you to allow notifications, which gives SmartScreen evidence before the first bad notification arrives.
Microsoft’s own demo shows the prompt with the extra option under the Block button. If you have already allowed a site, any notification it sends has a “…” menu where you can switch off future notifications from that site. Microsoft warns that fake alerts are built to confuse, so pressing their other buttons can simply open more pop-ups.
Why Microsoft changed approach
Scareware blocker has been switched on automatically for eligible PCs for a little over a year. Microsoft says it directly protects tens of thousands of people a day, and that by feeding what it finds into SmartScreen it shields millions more. In the preview, it found that each report protected about 50 other users.
Reading those reports showed a pattern: many of the scams began with a website notification that kept bringing people back to the scam page. Blocking the notification source, rather than only the scam page, was the response Microsoft chose. The company says Edge already blocks notification spam by the billions through other systems.
The automatic block only applies after SmartScreen or Scareware blocker has caught the scam. Until then the old advice stands: do not press “Allow” on a page that asks for notification permission to prove anything, and use “Block and report” when you see one.
