How to Delete iCloud Calendar Spam Without Alerting Spammers

[dmdev]

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.

A year ago, I decided to start "unsubscribing" from everything I saw. And within a few weeks I received almost 0 junk emails across 5 accounts. Obviously, though, anything that truly belongs in junk/spam in the first place (like poorly worded viagra) should be in spam and not responded to at all...

 

[ohio.emt]

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.

This doesn't work for this one, at least not for me. What did work was the one that SirZic posted. Since iCloud defaults to an in app notification that places it on your calendar their is no e-mail of that option to use. That solution would work for the events that are being caused by ads in apps, and facebook and such.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The Calendar spam seemed to persist for only one day. I'd already tried the email notification workaround, but so far, haven't received any more Calendar spam. So maybe Apple has plugged the hole already?

 

[2457248]

i seldom use calendar, and seeing these events on my laptop i thought this was sent by apple itself! either way, not cool.
if this plague is so widespread as it seems, apple should seed an official fix for this.

 

[Catwalk803]

Select the spam invitation and move it to the "Spam" calendar you just made.

Rayban spam has taken over my calendar. I have made the SPAM calendar folder in icloud as instructed. What I do not understand how to do is "Select the spam invite and move to the SPAM calendar".

While I'm logged into icloud calendar on my PC - and try to drag the event to the spam folder - I get a pop up box while I trying to move it and it states: Only the organizer of this event can make changes to it.


So how are you selecting and moving the spam event to the newly made SPAM calendar?
Thanks. I have 2 piled in my calendar from the holidays and I don't want to respond to them, but want them deleted so I can removed the glaring red "2" on my calendar app.

Thank you

 

[Aetles]

Probably a bit of both - the spammers are probably targeting iCloud at the moment but I generally find iCloud's spam filtering isn't as good as the competition: I find office 365 > Google > iCloud for spam filtering

That would be my guess too. My experience is also that Google is better than Apple to filter spam. Maybe that's an upside to Google reading all my mails…

 

[C DM]

But they said they really care about privacy..

And what does getting spam have to do with that?

Then it would seem that iCloud has been hacked.

Yeah...more like it seems like nothing of the sort happened.

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...

And who says they aren't?

 

[Naraxus]

I wish Apple would address this, so we don't have to use this kludgy work arounds

Yeah good luck with that. With the way Cupertino drags its feet on every issue that comes out we'll be lucky to see them address this before the end of the year.

 

[goobot]

Been happening to me for the past two weeks. Beyond annoying.

 

[avanpelt]

So how are you selecting and moving the spam event to the newly made SPAM calendar?
Thanks. I have 2 piled in my calendar from the holidays and I don't want to respond to them, but want them deleted so I can removed the glaring red "2" on my calendar app.

Open the spam invite in Calendar.app and there will be a little colored dropdown in the top-right corner of the details. Click on that and then you can select a different calendar to move the event to. After you have moved all the spam invites to the spam calendar, delete the spam calendar and click "Don't Notify..." and the spammers shouldn't be notified that their events were deleted.

Edit: Nevermind. I just noticed that you said you're on a PC. My solution wouldn't apply. Surely there's a similar solution in the Calendar portion of iCloud on the web. I'll let someone else chime in. I'm sorry for the confusion!

 

[jlc1978]

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...

It's not really a loophole but the way calendaring apps act. This behavior makes sense, you invite someone,, they see the invite and can accept or decline (or propose new time). that way you can use the calendar to schedule meetings and know if the person (s) can attend. It's very useful in that context. Unfortunately, spammers can use this to their benefit; just like they do with email. From their perspective it's better because the target sees the invite and it appears very little calendar spam filtering is done.

 

[C DM]

Yeah good luck with that. With the way Cupertino drags its feet on every issue that comes out we'll be lucky to see them address this before the end of the year.

It's not like there are already options that are available to deal with this.

 

[avanpelt]

It's not really a loophole but the way calendaring apps act.

What I want to know, then, is why this has not been a problem I've run into before with Exchange calendars or Google calendars. Have I been receiving this junk directed at my other e-mail addresses that are tied to Exchange and Google calendars all along and those calendar platforms are simply smart enough to filter out the spam so I never see it?

 

[C DM]

What I want to know, then, is why this has not been a problem I've run into before with Exchange calendars or Google calendars. Have I been receiving this junk directed at my other e-mail addresses that are tied to Exchange and Google calendars all along and those calendar platforms are simply smart enough to filter out the spam so I never see it?

Perhaps they caught the spam better, perhaps you never got spam invites at those accounts (just like all kinds of email accounts don't get spam emails while many others even from the same providers do), etc.

 

[saudade]

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.

What's the price 4 the raybans? If it's a cheap deal send me a pm plz. Im fine with fake imitations as long everybody can see the brand

 

[iapplelove]

I wonder if Tim Cook got any spam sent to his Calendar over the weekend ?

 

[nvmls]

And what does getting spam have to do with that?

Nothing, considering it's an app made by Apple ran in their cloud, I'd say that's just circumstantial, but don't get me wrong, I'm not pretending to make use of spam-free cloud based apps bearing their more than reasonable prices, it would be utopic to provide such scenario while also delivering all these emoji updates.

I'll wait for 10.12.2 release so I can paste their flagship face-palm one.

 

[cerote]

OMG thank you!

 

[Bryan Bowler]

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]

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.

Email may work for you, but not for me and my business. Apple needs to allow an option for us to delete an invite without sending any type of notification to the sender and they need to allow us to block senders, just like they do in Messages.

 

[keaide]

Deleting the calendar with the spam invitation notifies the sender anyway, even though the button says the opposite. It just works - to the advantage of the spammers.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

Yeah good luck with that. With the way Cupertino drags its feet on every issue that comes out we'll be lucky to see them address this before the end of the year.

Agreed! Phil probably brought the spam issue up at this morning's staff meeting, but Timmy pushed it aside so they could talk about the new emojis instead.

 

[CrystalQuest76]

I got hit with one of these on Thursday morning. I so wish these scammers with get honest jobs. Its getting more and more difficult to not be targeted for victimization.

 

[JoEw]

Can't believe Apple has not gotten on this, I can't block/report these emails doing this, also no option to only get calendar invites from contacts? Who wants calander invites from strangers?

 

[Telos101]

Deleting the calendar with the spam invitation notifies the sender anyway, even though the button says the opposite. It just works - to the advantage of the spammers.

With lack of hard evidence either way, the original method is worth a try. Nothing to lose!

 

[joe19812]

I cleared the events out if my calendar as described from my iPhone. But the original spam senders keep appearing in my "to" list whenever I create a new event and invite people. How do you purge those user id's from the list?