Spam iCloud calendar invitations

Spammers have found a way to abuse the iCloud calendar invitation system. You suddenly see events in your calendar for fake promotions, dodgy websites, or "congratulations you won" scams. They appear because anyone with your iCloud email address can send you a calendar invite.

Do not tap Accept or Decline

This is the most important thing. If you tap Decline (or Accept), the spammer gets a notification that your email address is real, and you will get more spam. Ignore the buttons entirely.

How to get rid of the spam events

1. On your Mac, open Calendar.
2. Create a new calendar called "Junk" (File → New Calendar).
3. Move the spam events to the Junk calendar by dragging them or right-clicking → Move to → Junk.
4. Delete the Junk calendar. This removes the events without sending a response to the spammer.

Stop future spam invitations

Go to icloud.com/calendar, click the gear icon in the bottom left, and open Preferences. Under the Advanced tab, change "Receive event notifications" from "In-app notifications" to "Email to (your email address)". This routes calendar invitations to your email, where your spam filter can handle them before they ever appear in your calendar.

Will Apple fix this?

Apple has acknowledged the problem and added a "Report Junk" option to calendar invitations on newer versions of iOS and macOS. If you see it, use it — it reports the spam and deletes the event without notifying the sender.

Enjoyed this post?

Well, you could share the post with others, follow me with RSS Feeds and/or send me a comment via email.

Tags