Every Site Now Has Something to Ask
The browser notification permission was added so that a calendar could remind you of a meeting or a mail client could tell you something had arrived. It was a useful idea, and like most useful ideas on the web it was quickly adopted for other purposes. A recipe site can ask for the same permission a calendar can, and many do, at the moment you land rather than after you have decided you like the place.
The result is a small negotiation at the start of nearly every first visit. None of it is dramatic and none of it is improper: the browser is doing precisely what it was designed to do, which is to ask you rather than to decide for you. It is simply that the asking now happens far more often than anyone planned for.
What makes it tiring is not the individual prompt but the accumulation. Twelve first visits in an afternoon of research is twelve permission strips, some number of newsletter overlays, a handful of chat squares and whatever else a page opens on arrival. Each one is a two-second decision. Together they are the reason a browsing session can feel busier than the reading in it.
It is also worth noting that once granted, a notification permission tends to be forgotten. Messages then appear on the desktop weeks later from a site whose name no longer means anything, which is usually the point at which people go looking for a way to stop being asked in the first place.
Four Categories, Not One
The first category is the browser permission request: notifications, location, camera. This is the browser's own strip, and the site can only ask; it is your answer that decides. The second is the overlay the site draws itself, usually a newsletter panel or a subscription offer, which is part of the page rather than part of the browser.
The third is the advertising slot, which reserves space and then loads its contents from elsewhere. The fourth is the measurement script, which records that the visit happened and reports it back. Only the first is a genuine question. The rest simply arrive, and it is the last three that a filtering extension can do something about before they appear.
A Closer Look at Total Adblock
Total Adblock is a browser extension, published on the Chrome Web Store by Total Security, and it works on those categories one at a time.
The provider says the extension uses filters to identify requests and scripts associated with advertising networks, and can also hide some ad or pop-up elements after they load. Results vary by browser, settings and website.
The page's own text and layout are left as the publisher wrote them, because those are not on any list. Here is how the main pieces work in practice.
