How to Delete iCloud Calendar Spam Without Alerting Spammers

[tigres]

Hi,
@iRockMan1, the events are not added thanks to your email, but thanks to in-app notifications.

This post is good to remove existing invites, but if you want to prevent them (you will still need to remove the existing ones following this post procedure), see the approved comment @
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/258424/spam-icloud-calendar-invitation

to sum-up:
1- login to you icloud account (via an internet browser),
2- go to the calendar
3- click on the wheel (bottom left corner),
4- Preferences
5- Advanced
6- in invitations menu, select Email to instead of In-app notifications.

Also, good practice, never ever refuse a spam invitation, or unsubscribe to a spam mailing list, it will just tell the spamer that your mail is in use
Cheers,
Cedric.

This method stops invites across the board, good and bad. Not a fix for those who rely on invite notifications and use them daily.

 

[Northgrove]

I don't understand why Apple allows total strangers to add events to your calendar just because they have your email address. What a huge oversight.

I know! This article is the first time I realize that the one I helped with this hadn't messed up and somehow subscribed to a spam calendar herself, or used some social network app that got too many of her rights to control her account. WTF. This is as bad as the Facebook feature where people can/could suck others into their groups via invites, making them join them and all. How does common sense not factor in here already in the design stage, much less implementation.

 

[Lidar]

Why would it be so hard to just add a DELETE option??? Maybe just slide the invitation to the left to delete. It's not rocket science...

I got an invite to go buy some Ray-Bans on Thanksgiving. I thought that if I ignored it it would go away after the end of the invitation, which was Friday night. To my surprise the ending day kept extending throughout the weekend. I couldn't take it any longer last night and hit the decline button. I know I shouldn't have done that but I couldn't take the glaring red 1 on my home screen.

 

[Mike5254]

Why would it be so hard to just add a DELETE option??? Maybe just slide the invitation to the left to delete. It's not rocket science...

I got an invite to go but some Ray-Bans on Thanksgiving. I thought that if I ignored it it would go away after the end of the invitation, which was Friday night. To my surprise the ending day kept extending throughout the weekend. I couldn't take it any longer last night and hit the decline button. I know I shouldn't have done that but I couldn't take the glaring red 1 on my home screen.

That's just what happened to me. But I have no idea why I shouldn't decline.

 

[jimothyGator]

But what if I WANT a buy one get one free breast enlargement? It comes with free Raybans after all.

It's up to you, of course, but I'd recommend getting two breast enlargements.
[doublepost=1480340153][/doublepost]

I have no idea why I shouldn't decline.

When you decline, you send a response to the sender, so they confirm that your email address is valid. That may beget more spam.

 

[Lidar]

If you hit the Decline option, it tells the spam bot that it hit an active account. Then the crap will keep coming. More than likely more and more...

 

[vjl323]

FYi, I've tested this method multiple times, and on iOS when you delete the calendar it does notify the person who invited you that you declined the event, even though you never responded. The *only* way to delete the event without notifying the user is to use 10.11 or 10.12 on macOS and use this method with the Calendar app. You will be prompted when you delete if you want to delete and notify or delete and not notify the person who invited you. On 10.9 Calendar, you are only given the choice to delete and notify. I don't run 10.10 anywhere, so I am unsure about that OS.

But for iOS, using the method described by Mac Rumors and lots of other sites, does in fact notify the spammer that you acted on the invite. This is easy to test by creating a new AppleID and inviting your primary one to an event, pretending your new AppleID is a spammer.

 

[jk10003]

THANK YOU! I turned on iCloud email recently and started to receive these spam invitations. Other searches did not produce such a simple and complete solution. Alas, I am inclined to believe that Apple will do nothing about this. (I turned iCloud email off.)

jk

 

[Mike5254]

It's up to you, of course, but I'd recommend getting two breast enlargements.
[doublepost=1480340153][/doublepost]

When you decline, you send a response to the sender, so they confirm that your email address is valid. That may beget more spam.

If you hit the Decline option, it tells the spam bot that it hit an active account. Then the crap will keep coming. More than likely more and more...

Thank you for the info. I appreciate it much. Lesson learned.

 

[jclardy]

I don't understand why Apple allows total strangers to add events to your calendar just because they have your email address. What a huge oversight.

Not really an oversight, just how every calendar service works. The problem is that Apple apparently doesn't have proper spam filtering. Someone sending out this many events to new email addresses should be easy to track and block at a pretty high level. The spam companies just figured out it could work before Apple has built a fix.

 

[dstud208]

What about a spam reminders list? I have one just sitting there, too scared to deny it.

 

[HomerW]

What? It's so much easier than all this guys (and gals). Disable the "Events found in apps" option on your iPhone located in Settings > Calendar. It's the last option on the screen.

If your Default Calendar is your iCloud calendar, then that explains why they're appearing on your iCloud calendar. The description even says: Turning this off will delete any unconfirmed event suggestions and prevent suggestions from appearing in the Calendar app.

[doublepost=1480343774][/doublepost]Unfortunately, this button was turned off and I received the spam event. Moved the event to a SPAM calendar too. Now it still shows in my regular calendar as having one "inbox" notice. Apple create a delete button!!!

 

[definitive]

Instead of having to waste time on all these instructions, Apple should be patching this loophole, so that people don't have to deal with this garbage in the first place...

 

[Bryan Bowler]

This has been driving me mad. I use my calendar for business scheduling needs, my personal life, and my family life. These invites have been populating my calendar on all of my devices like crazy. I have entire days on my calendar filled with multiple spam.

If Apple does not patch this up quickly and provide us with options, then I'm out of here and will be switching to a different calendar application.

I use my calendar heavily throughout the day and this really grates my nerves.

 

[iapplelove]

Happened to me as well and I posted about it. For now I deleted my calendar app and fixed the issue on my Mac. Changed my settings in iCloud to email me instead of alerting the calendar even though I technically don't have the calendar any longer. PITA

 

[bbeagle]

Instead of having to waste time on all these instructions, Apple should be patching this loophole, so that people don't have to deal with this garbage in the first place...

What about the 'loophole' that allows anyone to send you emails?

I received a spam notification on my calendar, so I made the point to now ensure all are sent to me by email first. Then my email spam takes care of them.

Yes, it's annoying that the spammers found a new way to get us. Simply turn it off in preferences, and you're done. Maybe there will be a way to set up an 'only allow invitations from' with a INCLUSION list of email addresses? But then the spammers will just fake other email accounts, like they currently do with email spam.

It's a never ending battle against spammers.
[doublepost=1480344887][/doublepost]

If Apple does not patch this up quickly and provide us with options, then I'm out of here and will be switching to a different calendar application.

They all work the same way. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo.

It's the same with email spam. Going to a different company won't fix it.

 

[mctrees02]

For those of us that rely on in-app notifications to make sure everything gets into our calendar, turning things to just email notifications isn't a great solution. Maybe Apple, Google, etc can add a "spam" option when replying to calendar invitations.

 

[Val-kyrie]

Is this peculiar to iOS 10 or MacOS 10.10+?

I haven't seen this problem (yet) [knocks on wood].

Running iOS 9.3.5 and OS X 10.9.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I had the insert invitations into calendar turned off on all of my idevices, and I still kept getting them

If you log in to your iCloud account, there is a setting there as well, and it was, inexplicably, turned on. If there is one thing that drives me batty at times, it's the rule and setting tracking of iOS and iCloud. Some settings track perfect, others don't. One would think that setting regarding invitations would be high on the list to track back to the iCloud account. One would think...

 

[Dimka]

I am not sure what happened on Apple's side, but somehow they opened the gate to spammers.
I get Calendar spam and Photos spam,
in Calendar it is actually possible to redirect it to email and filter,
in Photos there is not such functionality and it's getting out of control.
I get many "invitations" to join photo albums from Chinese spammers and if I decline they resend them right away.
So they are piling up. I guess more apps will follow.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

I got a few recently. Spam had Chinese characters in it. Never experienced calendar spam before that.

 

[2807]

Which watch band goes with deleting calendar spam?
So difficult.

 

[palmerc]

Ugh. This has happened to me long long before Black Friday. And I've never been able to get rid of it. Only it's in my reminders. The minute I delete it. It comes back. Trying to sell ray bans. Drives me crazy.

I reported it to Apple support via twitter and they removed it for me after a telephone call and emailed screenshots. So they're at least officially aware of the problem

 

[avanpelt]

Two things Apple could do to fix this:

1.) Give people options as far as who can add events to their calendar (i.e. Everyone, Contacts, Custom, No one)

2.) Give people the option to delete an invitation without sending a response

Outlook for Mac does number 2 already. It shouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement that functionality in Calendar. When I move the spam invites to a separate calendar and then delete the calendar, it gives me the option to delete the calendar and its invites without notifying the sender(s) of the invites. It should do that on the invite level, as well.

 

[AtheistP3ace]

I reported it to Apple support via twitter and they removed it for me after a telephone call and emailed screenshots. So they're at least officially aware of the problem

Great! Thanks for the tip. I will try that. I could ignore it but the notifications drive me nuts.