Notification in calendar: Won iPhone Xs Max

I got this just now also -- it looks to me like it's a google calendar invite issue -- if you guys can confirm if you're using google calendars, that'd be helpful. If so, here's what I did to hopefully prevent future instances of this. Log in to your gmail account at calendar.google.com, then click on the gear icon on the upper right, select settings in the left-hand menu, and then click on "Event Settings" -- there's an entry: "Automatically add invitations", that in my case was set to "Yes" (this is the default) -- I changed it to "No, only display invitations to which I have responded".

I just had FIVE of these spam calendars entries appear in my Google calendar over the weekend! Each spanned two days within August 2019:

>23rd - 24th

>24th - 25th

>25th - 26th

>26th - 27th

>27th - 28th

Not impressed. I've followed the instructions to no longer show invites that haven't been accepted, as well as to not show invites that have been declined. I also flagged each entry as spam, but was annoyed that I wasn't able to flag the entry as spam within the calendar apps that I use (Apple's default calendar app and also 'Calendars'), and instead had to log into my Google calendar via a web browser.

That's weird, that just happened to me too. It surprised me that your post was made today lol sounds like lots of people received the notification. I have an Android phone and it looks like the next five days in my calendar have a notification for "winning a free iPhone XS" that appeared out of nowhere. Why would so many people receive it? Did you receive the notification on iPhone, or an Android like me?

It brings me to a website error screen saying that the server I'm trying to reach is down lol the website is something like "Sweet Prizes Today" seems like there was some sort of scam bot that breached the Gmail calender for a bunch of us

read my earlier reply -- it's because google by defaults will show invitations that haven't been accepted or rejected. You can change that via settings though, as detailed in my other reply (vote it helpful so it shows at the top, and it's easier for others to get this fixed).

FYI -- It looks like mashable (and probably every other tech news site around) reported on this around June 17th this year: https://mashable.com/article/google-calendar-scam/

That includes the same instructions I gave for disabling the automatic inclusion of these invitations in your calendar.

Yes, I too am getting this through my google calendars, plus I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 if that makes any difference. What scares me is that I did what you said and changed the settings to "No", and 10 minutes later the same events popped up again for the next 3 days.

I hope google becomes aware of this, because breaches in security like this scare me :(

Me too. I changed the settings in my desktop Google GMAIL calendar settings assuming that they are "carried over" into the Android Google calendar app... because the app on my phone does not have those settings.. or at least I can't find them there.

Did you delete the previous event? Or decline it? I had the same thing, but I had deleted the event -- and it happened again the 2nd time I deleted them. The third time I declined, and changed the setting (as the mashable article I mentioned previously suggests), so it doesn't show declined events, and they disappeared, and haven't come back.

Having things automatically added to calendar is often helpful, though, so I hate to give that up to solve an occasional problem like this. Is there simply a way to delete the item without turning off the feature? Deleting or declining didn't seem to be an option (by design, I'm sure!).

I made the change to my iCloud calendar, but just got another notification. The notice only shows on my iPhone, but does not show up when I log into my google calendar on my laptop. So frustrating. Still trying to find a fix.

Just started getting tons of them last night and the emails are weird also because the from is my own iCloud email and the to is my gmail. So don't understand this, but just made the Google Calendar change that was shown on page 1 in the link, so will see if I get anymore. This has been a nightmare are tho...

I have the same issue with my calendar. I already followed all of the recommended steps to get rid of the spam and it’s all still there. I’ve checked the settings on the app as well. Anyone else have any other recommendations?

Of course it is. Name one legitimate company offering a prize that tells people about it with an unsolicited calendar invite for a contest you never entered and know nothing about?