Edit My Alert Settings

In the Edit My Alert Settings, for each component/alert types.. in the alert rules I see 2 of these.

"By default, send to portal with no parameters. (edit/delete)"

"By default, send to email with parameters timing=immediate (edit/delete)"

Does the first take over the second setting? I remember in the past my app admin would do the global setting for the alerts in the custom.properties so that staff would not be notified except for when a task is assigned to them or to them and others.

Have this changed since? Reason I ask is that I removed someone from a page and they got a notification, and I check with the app admin and the setting is no longer in the custom.properties file.

Thanks

MJ