Ondrej Holzman Many users who have their calendars on iCloud have been facing a very unpleasant problem in recent weeks. At various frequencies, spam is sent out in the form of invitations to various, usually discount events, which are definitely unsolicited. There are several steps to address spam in calendars.
Most of the unsolicited invitations appear to originate from China and advertise various discounts. We recently received an invitation to the Ray-Ban discounts on the occasion of Cyber Monday, but this is definitely not just a phenomenon connected with the current discount fever.
"Someone has a large list of email addresses and sends out calendar invites with spam links attached," explains on your blog MacSparky David Sparks. A notification will then pop up on your Mac where you can accept the invitation.
Sparks then presents a total of three steps that are good to take against spam invitations and on which most users have agreed in recent weeks. According to the number of posts on various forums and apple websites, this is a global problem that Apple has not yet been able to solve in any way.
Updated 1/12/17.00. Apple has already commented on the situation, for iMore company introduced, that the problem with unsolicited invitations is being addressed: “We're sorry that some of our users are receiving unsolicited calendar invitations. We are actively working to resolve this issue by identifying and blocking suspicious senders and spam in the invitations sent.”
Updated 12/12/13.15. Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), lowered within your calendar on iCloud, a new function thanks to which you can report the sender of unsolicited invitations, which will both delete the spam and, in addition, send information about it to Apple, which will check the situation. For now, the feature is only available in iCloud's web interface, but it's expected to roll out to native apps as well.
If you continue to receive unsolicited invitations in your iCloud calendar, please do the following:
- On iCloud.com sign in with your Apple ID.
- Look for the relevant invitation in the Calendar.
- If you do not have the sender in your address book, a message will appear "This sender is not in your contacts" and you can use the button Report.
- The invitation will be reported as spam, automatically deleted from your calendar, and the information will be sent to Apple.
Below you will find additional steps to prevent unwanted calendar invitations on iCloud.
Never respond to invitations
Although it may seem like a possibility Refuse as a logical choice, it is recommended not to react either negatively or positively to received invitations (Accept), because this only gives the sender an echo that the given address is active and you can only receive more and more invitations. Therefore, it is better to choose the following solution.
Move and delete invitations
Instead of responding to invitations, it is more efficient to create a new calendar (name it, for example, "Spam") and move unsolicited invitations to it. Then delete the entire newly created calendar. It is important to check the option "Delete and Do Not Report", so that you no longer receive any notifications. However, that doesn't mean you won't receive any other invitation spam. If more arrive, the whole procedure must be repeated again.
Forward notifications to e-mail
If unsolicited invitations continue to crowd your calendars, there is another option to prevent notifications. You can also receive event invitations via email instead of notifications in the Mac app. This means that you can get rid of spam via email without the invitation getting into your calendar.
To change how you receive invitations, sign in to your iCloud.com account, open Calendar, and click the gear icon in the lower left corner. There, choose Preferences... > Other > check the Invitations section Send email to… > Save.
However, the problem in this case arises if you otherwise actively use invitations, for example, within the family or company. It is, of course, much more convenient when the invitations go straight to the application, where you just confirm or reject them. Going to e-mail for this is an unnecessary hassle. However, if you don't use invitations, redirecting their receipt to e-mail is the most effective solution to fight against spam.
Yes, again a beautiful example of how useless iCal is, what I can do in 1 second in Outlook or any normal email service, I spend an hour researching how to do it with Apple.
The user experience really sucks, this spam points it out beautifully. I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to actually delete the invite after declining so it doesn't show up in third party apps. I finally found it - "View - Show Rejected Events". Easy but counterintuitive.
Just because you're looking for something for a long time doesn't necessarily mean the system is stupid…
Even riding a bike is pretty damn counterintuitive. Until I learn it… ;)
It affected me too, hopefully it won't happen again, I hastily rejected and deleted everything. ?
This also works on my iPad, I have already created 2 calendars and deleted the extra ones, and in a few days some spam will pop up again.