Google Pop-Up/Message...?

[Koldov]

Strange one this!

 

I just had a teacher ask me if I sent her a message on 'Google' this morning... apparently something popped-up in the bottom right hand corner of her screen asking about if she had 'downloaded something or other'...

 

Unfortunately, this isn't the most technical/I.T. literate user and explanations are usually quite lacking in detail and flustered, so I'm unsure if it was actually Google or some other sort of pop-up... but she was 'on Google' at the time....

 

The thing is it apparently had my name on it, but I don't use the Google account with my name and just checked in 'Google Admin > Reporting > Audit and investigation' and I haven't signed on with that account since February!

 

It might have been an email pop-up, but she doesn't use Outlook just OWA (not sure if that pops up a message for new email in Windows 10 or not)...

 

Unfortunately she was in a SATs exam and had a timer on Google, so just quickly closed the message. Is there anyway to send any type of message like this through Google and how can I check if one was sent?

[tmoon-mint]

Sounds to me like a site has asked the user if they want to receive notifications and the user has said yes. We used to get this when staff would browse to "questionable" websites and had an instance where one of the notifications was of an adult nature. We now block all sites from sending notifications in both Chrome and Edge.

[bald_pig]

If you're on win10, it was probably a win10 notification, and should be able to find it from the notification centre at the bottom right. Odds are it was completely unrelated and didn't have your name on it!

[LeMarchand]

Sounds to me like a site has asked the user if they want to receive notifications and the user has said yes. We used to get this when staff would browse to "questionable" websites and had an instance where one of the notifications was of an adult nature. We now block all sites from sending notifications in both Chrome and Edge.

 

My thoughts and solution, too.

Odds are it was completely unrelated and didn't have your name on it!

 

This too!

[Koldov]

Thanks, yes all very plausible (and probably likely)... She's actually shut down her laptop now so unlikely to find anything else...

 

It's just she seemed very insistent it had my name on and it was asking about a download, so I wanted to rule out any sort of Google 'message/pop-up' as being impossible first and 'err on the side of caution' before I wrote it off as the usual (just my luck if I did that and it was something more serious).

 

I do have the default Chrome notification policy set as 'Do not allow' but with an exception for... [*.]Google.com for Google stuff, maybe that is a bit too open...?

[tmoon-mint]

OWA does do desktop notifications so if you sent her an email its quite possible it was this. We use O365 and it does desktop notifications so I expect Google does too.