Unlike with iOS or Android, in HTML5 invasive APIs (including notifications) are all opt-in. Each permission is granular, instead of needing to choose between granting all permissions an app requires or none. IMO this is a massive improvement.
Although you could grant notification access to an app and then it could become a bad actor, I expect on the web you will be able to be far more choosy about granting access than with an app.
I believe Android is doing something to bring in granular permissions, there was discussion at Google I/O this year.
Re:Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps
by mrbuttons454 on Friday September 25, 2015 @11:04AM
(#10278557)
Push notifications are opt-in and granular on iOS as well. You are prompted to approve each permission for each app, push notifications, location services, access to contacts, etc.
I remember reading about this a while ago; not sure how widely implemented this feature is
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/push-notif...