I woke up this morning seeing two notifications of calendar appointments I just couldn’t miss. [sarcasm]
Annoying, right? Here’s the best part. No matter what I do – Accept, Maybe, Decline – the sender of the spam appointment receives the notification of my action. There’s no way to just simply delete the damn invitation from your calendar without sending the reply! Well I guess that means 章兴言 & 历昭 are going to get a sad decline from me.
How do I prevent this from happening in the future? How the hell did it happen? Turns out it’s Apple again – thinking they know better for how you want to use e-mail and calendars. Thankfully there is an option to prevent the forced invites.
The Answer Lies in iCloud.com
These calendar invites aren’t coming from some magic hacked portal in your phone. The invites are coming as e-mails into your iCloud.com e-mail account and then being automatically converted into in-app push notifications to both iOS and macOS. Once that’s done the original e-mail is deleted. Gone. Poof. Magical, yet stabby.
Let’s turn off this magical conversion so we have the ability to spam the incoming e-mails and never have them hit your calendar.
- First, open iCloud.com up in a web browser.
- Log into using the account you use on your phone (where your calendars are stored).
- Click on Calendar.
- Click on the settings gear
in the lower left of the screen. - Click on Preferences.
- Click the Advanced tab.
- Under Invitations set the option for Receive event notifications as to the second option, as an Email to rather than an in-app notification.
Going forward then all of the invites you receive to your iCloud e-mail account will be received as e-mails.
Damn you, spammers!
~A
[update]
Deleting Spam Invites Without Sending Notifications
Taken from the Apple Discussion Forums, here’s a workaround to delete invites without sending the response to the spammer using macOS:
- Create a new iCloud calendar (not “On My Mac”).
- Move the spam event to the new iCloud calendar.
- Delete the new iCloud calendar.
- Calendar will now prompt you with “Delete and Don’t Notify” and “Delete and Notify”.
- Select “Delete and Don’t Notify”.
Original post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3705591?tstart=0
James Frost
Thanks – I just started receiving these too, so this is super useful!
One note: you missed a small step between 4. and 5. in the first list (for me, at least) – I had to click ‘Preferences’ after clicking the settings gear.
Aaron Douglas
I’m going to hire you as my copy editor. Made the edit – thanks!!
Steve Graff
After creating a new ‘spam’ calendar on iCloud.com I found that I could not move the spam invite to that calendar; I received an error that only the creator could do that. I had to use the Calendar app on my Mac to move it, which worked, then deleted the ‘spam’ calendar from there. It did not, however, prompt with notification options.
Adam Klein
For all those who care, I had to use my iPhone calendar to move to the new temporary spam calendar to delete these events. I don’t have a Mac so I could not use that approach.
adambradford
Great tip, got my first calendar spam this morning (same sender as yours) and wondered what the heck! Now I know.
Brian
Any idea what to do when you get spam photo album or reminder invites??
Aaron Douglas
That one I haven’t gotten yet! I’ll look around!
Ed
Excellent … thank you!
innersenseabroad
Ugg and Ray Ban are barraging our calendars today too. I have tried all sorts of options from the web including using Terminal but without much success. In the end, I found two things worked: (1) logging in to iCloud on the web and deleting the fake appointments in the Calendar app there; and (2) in the Settings function on my iPhone, I turned off the setting “Events Found in Apps”. When this is turned off, it “deletes all unconfirmed event suggestions and prevent suggestions from appearing in Calendar app”!
Carlo
Great suggestion, thanks. However I have opened a radar with Apple to add this “decline without sending response” in their Calendar apps on macOs and iOS: #29384053
Ric Day
If you have Fantatical installed, the options to delete, etc can be used without the sender being notified.
JohnT
Hi Ric Day,
Can you tell me what you do in Fantastical to delete without notifying? When I delete, it wants to send a decline. Fantastical 2.3 in use here.
Ric Day
JohnT
I assume you are using version1.3.xx of Fantastical? When I decline it simply ignores the invitation.
yarving
Thanks, it’s a good point to prevent anoy emails.
Royally Pissed Off
I did all the fixes and tips and everything was fine yesterday. This morning, it did it again! I even changed to email notification and their software had a workaround and put it into the calendar!
Miss Nancy
Me too and nothing works!
Robert Felty
Thanks so much for posting Aaron! I got one of these too, and I was totally confused.
mikentosh
I found that Fantastical lets me delete the events without accepting them. As I’ve said about Fantastical repeatedly, “Money well spent!”
Matt Sherman
Thanks! My wife just got a few of these the other day and I had no idea why or how to prevent it in the future.
Deborah Farrow
Thanks Carlos, Please stay on Apple to put in a fix. And thanks to all for suggestions. This is another annoying intrusion that we shouldn’t have to work so hard to individually prevent. I too went into settings and turned off Events Found in Apps. That did cause the second spam found for November 28Ray Ban event to delete. The first spam for November 17 and 18 remained as grayed out after I unknowingly “declined” after not being able to delete Duh.
Rachel
When I log into my iCloud browser, preferences does not give me the option to “email to.” How do I get this option to come up?
Aaron Douglas
Do you have an Invitations section in Calendar advanced preference at all?
Rachel
It only gives me the option to receive “in-app notifications”
Krissi
I have this same issue. Would love a suggestion…
missmelancollie
Hi,
I tried the iCloud tip – moving the notifications to email and then blocking the emails – but even after restarting the bloody invites are still in my calendar (three of them staring at me). I also had one in my Photos the other day.
All this makes me wonder how secure Apple is. I’m due a new laptop and phone anyway, and I wonder if it’s time to jump ship and go for PC. Any thoughts?
CLP
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Your instructions worked perfectly. I changed settings, created new calendar, moved event, deleted calendar — voila! I then recreated a SPAM calendar to use for any future “RayBan Sale” notices…
Miss Nancy
Moving the Chinese spam into another calendar folder, then deleting it doesn’t solve the problem. They just send another one later and it goes into one of your other folders. I had to turn off my calendar completely to get it to stop! Wish Apple would pretending this isn’t happening!
Alim
Thank you! Very helpful.
To move the items, I had to use my phone.
Went to the Calendar app, Inbox option and opened each invite in order to change the assigned calendar.
When it came time to delete the calendar, I was not prompted with options to “Do Not Notify”.
In any case, all is good for now and hopefully the spammers did not get notified.
Great tip!!
Thanks,
A.
E. C. Haynes
Thank you! I started receiving this a few days ago and it has been extremely annoying, especially because I use my calendar to manage my business appointments/conference calls.