How are these Chinese spam iCloud Calendar/Reminders invitations sent to me?

Question

Recently, I’ve received a couple of spam event invitations in Calendar on my Mac. The most recent had only Chinese text, and recurred at 5:46am every day.

I am able to decline these by clicking on the invitations button in the toolbar (that only appears when an invitation comes in). However, ideally I’d like to not receive these spam invitations at all.

As I’ve never received a genuine invitation through Calendar, I thought I might be able to turn off the invitation feature. However, I can’t see any controls for this in Calendar preferences or the Internet Account system preferences.

Through what mechanism do these invitation arrive? If I understood what mechanism it was, I might be able to turn it off. I have two Calendar accounts enabled: iCloud, and Facebook. I can’t see anything in my e-mail, so I presume they’re not regular e-mail spam.

Since first writing this question, I’ve had a similar invitation come through in Reminders:

David Sparks has a good write-up of this problem. – Paul D. Waite Nov 29 '16 at 12:07 — Paul D. Waite, Nov 29 '16 at 12:07

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 18 '16 at 01:09

6

It's simply that anyone can send an email to you. If spam rules don't block it, Apple software (with default settings) processes the invitation before you can take any action.

To prevent this automatic processing, try this.

Log in to iCloud on the web, open your calendar and go to ⚙ > Preferences (in the lower left corner). Under Advanced tab you’ll find an option to receive calendar invitations by e-mail instead of directly to your calendar.

edited Nov 18 '16 at 01:09

bmike

235,889

answered Nov 08 '16 at 18:03

Denis Rasulev

3,461

Hey that looks good — I’ve given that a go, it’ll be interesting to see if any more spam ones come through and show up in my e-mail. – Paul D. Waite Nov 10 '16 at 22:44
I know! I’ve since had a similar spam invitation appear in Reminders, which sadly does not have an equivalent settings screen on iCloud.com. – Paul D. Waite Nov 17 '16 at 23:10
Probably you could post a new question about it. – Denis Rasulev Nov 18 '16 at 03:47
Feels like it’s the same issue to me. – Paul D. Waite Nov 18 '16 at 10:36

score -2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 03 '16 at 13:07

-2

Invitations can only come through direct email input, meaning that the inviter has your email address. How did the inviter get hold of your email? that's another issue.

answered Nov 03 '16 at 13:07

Yousif Al-Raheem

101

“Invitations can only come through direct email input” — so they come through e-mail, but only show up in Calendar, and not at all in Mail? – Paul D. Waite Nov 03 '16 at 14:21
If I would like to invite you into an even I would have to key-in your email address in the invitee's section. Doing so you will receive an invitation directly in your calendar where you can accept or reject. If you haven't received an email it's probably because the invitation is made through Apple's calendar. Meaning that they used a Mac to create the event. – Yousif Al-Raheem Nov 03 '16 at 22:25
You can report the email that keeps inviting your as a spam if you want to. Visit this link for more details: – Yousif Al-Raheem Nov 03 '16 at 22:26
http://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/phishing/ – Yousif Al-Raheem Nov 03 '16 at 22:26
1

Gotcha — so the invitations probably go through my iCloud calendar account. That link doesn’t help me to report these, because it asks us to forward illegitimate e-mails to Apple. As I say, I don’t think I’m getting e-mails, just Calendar invitations. – Paul D. Waite Nov 03 '16 at 22:49
Alibaba I'll bet – Marc Nov 25 '16 at 18:12
I never used my email from iCloud... you tell me how they got my email... – Alex Nov 28 '16 at 08:51

How are these Chinese spam iCloud Calendar/Reminders invitations sent to me?

2 Answers2