Calendar spam might not be on your radar yet, but over the last few weeks there have been more and more reports of spam calendar invitations. These invites are created to just spam you with sales for various products.
The reason why this has become a problem is because macOS and iOS automatically scan your mail inbox for calendar invites. When found, the user is presented with a prompt to accept the invitation (as shown above). But the invitation has the spam message in it. As this is a new type of spam, most anti spam systems are not finding them. This also effects iCloud Photo Sharing.
Apple is aware of it and is looking into possible solutions. But, if you are experiencing this already, what can you do? Well, there are a couple of solutions. They are not ideal, but do offer some relief.
Calendar spam solution 1: create a spam calendar
One solution is to create a new calendar and call it something like “Spam”. You can the move or send all the spam invites to it. Once you have done that you can delete the calendar , which will delete all the invites. Make sure you select the “Delete and Don’t Notify” option when promoted. Be aware even if you select this option, the spammer may still see you have declined the invite and so will now know this is an active account.
Calendar spam solution 2: disable all automatic invites
The second option is to disable the option that automatically adds invites to the calendar app directly. You can do this by performing these steps:
- Log in to iCloud Calendar via web browser
- Authenticate if needed, then select the Calendar view
- Select the Settings Gear icon
in the bottom left corner then hit preferences - Select Advanced
- Select the option to receive calendar invitations by email instead in app notification.
At this point you can verify all your invites via your email client first. It reduces the user experience but will help you manage this issue. Most people have not been affected by spam calendar invites, but if you have hopefully this will help.