Make website blocked notification less intrusive

[jayman1000]

The MB popup notification when a website it blocked is very intrusive; it's a large popup that is forced to be on top everything and cannot be moved, and it stays there too long for my taste. The popup will continue to spam the user on every block even if "close" was clicked just half a second ago. Is there some way to make it much less intrusive? I don't want to disable the notification entirely, but merely limit it it's presence so it doesn't popup in the middle of the screen and forces me to click on it. Ideally I'd like to enable only a sound notification if possible.

Alternatively: if there is no way to make notification less intrusive, how can I entirely disable notifications about website blocking?

Edited November 28, 2017 by jayman1000

[Firefox]

Thanks for the post.... Comments and Suggestions usually go RIGHT HERE

 

[jayman1000]

10 minutes ago, Firefox said:

Thanks for the post.... Comments and Suggestions usually go RIGHT HERE

 

Um would you consider actually helping answer my question? Im asking for help on HOW TO MAKE THE POPUP LESS INTRUSIVE. Im not making a suggestion here, I want to know how I can change the popup. If it is impossible to change its behavior you can just tell me so; and if so how can I entirely disable notifications about website blocking?

So.. will you help me?

 

Edited November 28, 2017 by jayman1000

[Firefox]

What you see is what you get at this time... unfortunately you can only turn then on or off.  They were suppose to be working on notifications since way back in version 2 however we are on version 3 now, and we still don't have a good way to control notifications.

Hope that helps answer your question a little better.

[jayman1000]

2 minutes ago, Firefox said:

What you see is what you get at this time... unfortunately you can only turn then on or off.  They were suppose to be working on notifications since way back in version 2 however we are on version 3 now, and we still don't have a good way to control notifications.

Hope that helps answer your question a little better.

Sure, that helps me better. Would you mind explaining how to entirely disable notifications for website blocking?

[Firefox]

Sure.... assuming your using version 3...

Open Malwarebytes -> Settings -> Application Tab -> turn off Show Malwarebytes notifications in the Windows System Tray

However that will turn off all notifications, not only website blocking ones.

[Porthos]

3 minutes ago, jayman1000 said:

Would you mind explaining how to entirely disable notifications for website blocking?

 

[jayman1000]

Okay thanks... obviously I don't want to turn off ALL notifications. LOL... who makes these design decisions.

Oh and you know where it says "Windows system tray"? It's not being displayed in the system tray, it's being displayed a little to the left of the middle of the screen....

Edited November 28, 2017 by jayman1000

[dcollins]

@jayman1000 did you change your resolution by chance? The notification should be in bottom corner, but we do have a known issue where changing resolution makes the notification show up wherever the task tray used to be

[Porthos]

On 11/28/2017 at 3:25 PM, jayman1000 said:

obviously I don't want to turn off ALL notifications.

no choice

 

On 11/28/2017 at 3:25 PM, jayman1000 said:

Oh and you know where it says "Windows system tray"? It's not being displayed in the system tray, it's being displayed a little to the left of the middle of the screen...

it will do the job.

What are these blocks? Could you provide a few website block logs?

Edited November 29, 2017 by Porthos

[lock]

30 minutes ago, jayman1000 said:

Sure, that helps me better. Would you mind explaining how to entirely disable notifications for website blocking?

Read here how....

[jayman1000]

18 minutes ago, dcollins said:

@jayman1000 did you change your resolution by chance? The notification should be in bottom corner, but we do have a known issue where changing resolution makes the notification show up wherever the task tray used to be

Yes I change my resolution often when playing games.

[dcollins]

@jayman1000 thanks, that definitely what's going on here. We have this issue logged so we can work on a fix at some point

[digger78]

I will submit a suggestion as well, but I just wanted to point out here that I agree 100% with the original poster.  There should be a way to turn off all notifications regarding website blocking, while leaving the other notifications allowable.

[lock]

5 hours ago, digger78 said:

There should be a way to turn off all notifications regarding website blocking, while leaving the other notifications allowable.

So, if you turn off notifications regarding website blocking, how would you know that a website is blocked ???

You will not be able to open the webpage without knowing why...

[Porthos]

48 minutes ago, lock said:

So, if you turn off notifications regarding website blocking, how would you know that a website is blocked ???

You will not be able to open the webpage without knowing why..

If the site is blocked you still see this screen

 

[Porthos]

@jayman1000

On 11/28/2017 at 3:28 PM, Porthos said:

What are these blocks? Could you provide a few website block logs?

 

[exile360]

5 hours ago, Porthos said:

If the site is blocked you still see this screen

 

Only if the block is from visiting a site via a web browser.  If the block occurs through any other program on the system (such as, for example, svchost.exe or any other system process, which might be a sign of attack/a possible worm or Trojan) no such webpage will be displayed.  In fact, my fear would be that an undetected Trojan is successfully installed/active on a user's system, they have notifications for web blocks disabled and they never realize that anything is wrong because they are never notified of the frequent web blocks which might have clued them into the fact that something on their system is constantly attempting to connect to a malicious server.

I'd much rather see an option to disable notifications from a specific process or IP/domain while still continuing to block them.  For example, if I know that every time I visit a particular website one of the embedded ads on the web page always triggers a block, I might want to disable notifications about that particular server/site being blocked when the source of the connection is my web browser.  Likewise, if the source of frequent web blocks is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) application such as Skype or uTorrent, I might desire to disable block notifications for connections whose source is that particular program while still showing notifications for blocks from all other programs on my system.

Web block notifications have too much use as a tool for diagnosing an undetected attack and/or infection to be disabled completely in my opinion.  In fact, many users recently have been alerted to the fact that they had a PUP and/or malicious browser extension installed without their knowledge because of such web blocks.  They contacted us because of the issue, our malware removal specialists assisted them, discovered the extensions/plugins causing the issue, removed them and the users left happy knowing that they no longer had an unknown extension messing with their browsing.

Ideally we would of course want our other protection components to stop such attacks beforehand, but the reality is that this is not always possible which is one reason we have web blocking in the first place to not only block the sources of many threats, but also to block connections to malicious command & control servers and other malicious hosts used by malware.

[jayman1000]

On 11/30/2017 at 5:23 AM, exile360 said:

Only if the block is from visiting a site via a web browser.  If the block occurs through any other program on the system (such as, for example, svchost.exe or any other system process, which might be a sign of attack/a possible worm or Trojan) no such webpage will be displayed.  In fact, my fear would be that an undetected Trojan is successfully installed/active on a user's system, they have notifications for web blocks disabled and they never realize that anything is wrong because they are never notified of the frequent web blocks which might have clued them into the fact that something on their system is constantly attempting to connect to a malicious server.

I'd much rather see an option to disable notifications from a specific process or IP/domain while still continuing to block them.  For example, if I know that every time I visit a particular website one of the embedded ads on the web page always triggers a block, I might want to disable notifications about that particular server/site being blocked when the source of the connection is my web browser.  Likewise, if the source of frequent web blocks is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) application such as Skype or uTorrent, I might desire to disable block notifications for connections whose source is that particular program while still showing notifications for blocks from all other programs on my system.

Web block notifications have too much use as a tool for diagnosing an undetected attack and/or infection to be disabled completely in my opinion.  In fact, many users recently have been alerted to the fact that they had a PUP and/or malicious browser extension installed without their knowledge because of such web blocks.  They contacted us because of the issue, our malware removal specialists assisted them, discovered the extensions/plugins causing the issue, removed them and the users left happy knowing that they no longer had an unknown extension messing with their browsing.

Ideally we would of course want our other protection components to stop such attacks beforehand, but the reality is that this is not always possible which is one reason we have web blocking in the first place to not only block the sources of many threats, but also to block connections to malicious command & control servers and other malicious hosts used by malware.

I agree, and that is why I sorely miss a way to customize notifications. What we have now is either turn ALL notifications on, which in a number of cases feels intrusive for the user without giving much usable information like with what you mention blocking that particular add on a website, or particular IP's when using Skype/uTorrent etc. Or turn ALL notifications off which naturally is just a very very bad idea. Sorry for the long delay in replying, I actually thought I had posted this message, but I hadn't. The forum page had saved it as a sort of draft it seems.

[Porthos]

 

1 hour ago, jayman1000 said:

when using Skype/uTorrent etc.

You can exclude those programs from Malwarebytes if the program is located on the system drive.  Then MB will not block those programs. 

 

[jayman1000]

9 hours ago, Porthos said:

 

You can exclude those programs from Malwarebytes if the program is located on the system drive.  Then MB will not block those programs. 

 

I don't want to exclude them from detection or blocking. If MB thinks the ip adresses are malicious or with a malicious reputation then Im fine with blocking them. I just want the notifications being much less intrusive, silent even. Having a popup box intrude on top of any program is super intrusive and annoying.

Edited January 17, 2018 by jayman1000