Received random spam Calendar invitation

grolaw wrote:

Auto correct / spell check changed DOS to DNS - - if you or I were hit with 1 - a single iCal invite/second we would have to abandon iCal.

A "targeted" denial of service attack.

You are making up threats where they don't exist. Simply think through the issue…

The spammers already have your email address - they could already 'attack' by sending you thousands of messages. Most email is junk filtered & limited at the server so that would fail unless the attacker had resources to send from many, many accounts in which case rules to drop calendar files would help.

Simply tagging the mail as spam would stop the email for most users.

Turn off your internet to prevent new events being created on a device (if you were ever in a situation where the setting was on & you were being flooded with invitations).

Sure, this is an annoying problem, however it is trivial to solve - disable the automatic 'add to calendar' features of Mail.app & iCloud.com.

It seems short sighted to jump to another system simply because of this, especially as iCal invitations are a standard that many email applications will handle & pass to a calendar application. Look around - there are complaints for Outlook & other apps getting this spam. It isn't just Apple picking poor default settings.

I hope Lexis's app suits your needs, check the iCloud terms it was never built for buisnesses anyway, which is what you seem to have been doing with it.

I have had a business class relationship with Apple, of one sort or another, since 1990. I worked with Apple's government/business approved vendors/consultants through 2006 when the Apple Store business model became standard in my region.

The ten Apple ID accounts that I currently hold date back to the first of the .Mac days. And, I certainly did have the .Mac system recommended for my practice.

I would have to look up the record, but I believe that it was 2006 that I hired a consulting firm out of Cleveland to integrate iCal with my small-firm docketing needs. The referral came from the business representative at the new Apple Store. As I recall, the front end cost about $2,500.00 and ran concurrently on a number of iBooks, a goose-neck iMac, and several windows boxes.

I don't doubt that those types of special adaptations are readily available today. My point is that I adopted the system specifically for my law practice with the assistance of Apple's own business rep.

As far as Email SPAM goes, I can tell you when the Spammers went all out - in my case it was 1997 when my copy of Eudora went chugging along and about October I jumped from 100k emails/domain to 3.5 meg by the end of the year.

I employ a number of filtering strategies and I have many email accounts that are dedicated to one task (e.g. all US District Court email).

The iCal SPAM is devistating where there may be no defense against the Spammer and liability is very high. Miss a deadline and call the malpractice carrier high.

No, I really don't like the Lexis docket. I really don't like the idea of the cost, the potential for security breach, and the limitations it imposes. But, I don't have the luxury to wait and see what kind of fix iCal receives.

Right now the biggest Spam problem I face is VOIP SPIT. My office lines field thousands of these and I've had call filtering hardware installed to block much, but not all, of that time-stealing nuisance.

<Edited by Host>

Invitations keep coming in!

Just do something about it Apple, and do it quick!

Your talking calendar spam right ? If so here's the best workaround I've seen yet.

It's from the comment section of the article below.

Here's the article.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/09/icloud-photo-sharing-and-calendar-spam/

Authored by https://disqus.com/by/flashgen/

There is a slightly easier way to stop the non-email associated spam calendar events showing up. i.e. the ones that just appear in your calendar like magic.

Just log in to iCloud.com open your calendar. Then under the calendars settings (cog icon lower left of the screen), select the Preferences entry and then the Advanced tab. You'll likely notice that your Invitations setting is defaulted to in-app notifications. Change that to email and it'll prevent future invites automatically appear solely in your calendar (you'll get it as an email that is easier to delete without confirming a live account). This has stopped the calendar ones appearing for me…

I was aware of these workarounds.

But what if someone in my contact list sends me an invitation? I then have to go to mail and accept the invitation. I just want to accept te invitation in the calendar app. Isn't that what automating tasks is about?

Now because someone outside my contact list sends me (spam) invitations I have to use a workaround via email or moving items to spam calendars (and delete). Isn't that the wrong way around?

No I don't want random spammers to fill my calendar. But I do want to accept invitation from friends and family right from the calendar app.

That's what Apple has to solve. Nobody should accept workarounds for major issues.

You can use the workaroud until Apple has a fix or you can watch your calendar fill up with spam. Your choice.

Be sure to send Apple feedback so they realize the size of the problem.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

I already used these workarounds.

But just wanted to keep Apple's attention to this problem (at least in my eyes), via this community and feedback support etc.

Thanks anyway

You're welcome. The feedback link is by far and away the best way to let Apple know, unfortunately they don't read the Forum cateloging the problems.

Normally I'm in the iPad Forum but taking a look around the whole Forum I can't believe how fast this problem has grown.

There was a good suggestion at http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/258424/spam-icloud-calendar-invitation

“Log in to iCloud on the web, open your calendar, and go to ⚙ > Preferences (bottom left in your window).

Under Advanced, you’ll find an option to receive calendar invitations by email instead of straight into your calendar. This should allow you to delete calendar spam like regular email spam.”

Do not move the invitation and then delete it, as it is likely the spam sender will still get a declined notification and know your address is real.

Apple should take note, Calendar spam is super-annoying.

Hello I have also received this iCal spam. It has repeated twice now after I did press decline. Particularly annoying as the alert woke me at three in the morning. I will be removing Calendars from my phone and disabling my icloud calendar account on my computer until this goes away. Apple, can you help?

Earlier today I did a User Tip showing how you can keep spam from your Calender. It's essentially the same tip ovadya gave directly before your post. I added screenshots.

Stopping Calendar Spam on your iPad.

I received this same email today and I followed two steps that were recommended on this thread: 1) I did go to icloud.com, sign in, go to calendar, go to advanced settings and change the invitations to apps to be invitations to email. 2) I went to the calendar app on my computer, created a new calendar, moved the event to the new calendar, (it took a few minutes to show it was moved, so wait until you see the invitation show up). Then go to delete the account, there is an option to delete and notify, and an option to delete and not notify. The option to delete and notify is the automatically chosen, switch it to delete and not notify. I have a macbook with Sierra OS. Maybe this is a new option on Sierra? I don't know. Hopefully I got lucky, as I am clueless with this stuff, but so far, It's gone. Good luck everybody.

I've come across two news stories already covering the iCal spam issue. Maybe the more publicity it gets, the better!

http://gizmodo.com/how-to-stop-icloud-calendar-spam-1789430890

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/technology/personaltech/fighting-ios-calendar- spam.html

If you still have AppleCare or are under the original warranty go to the Apple Support page and start a ticket under the iCal / OS category.

I've done that with the posts that I made here.

Consider the scope of this problem. It appears to be a phishing scheme, but the bad actor(s) behind this have found a way to insert notifications that cannot be blocked.

I have deleted the Home & Work calendar defaults and still received a notification on a random-named calendar that has been dormant for six years (a calendar of flights I took in 2010 - at the time I was traveling back and forth across the country several days a week for two months - my spouse & son had shares so that they could keep track of when I would be available). I am very concerned about this.

Filing a warranty/support claim with screen shots (on an iPhone/iPad you press the on-off & home buttons; on Macs there are many ways to capture the screen - I chose grab (included with the OS) - -but, Mac screen caps are .Tiff files and Apple's tech support upload will not accept .Tiff - I converted the screen grabs to .Jpg files with Graphic Converter 9 but you can open a .Tiff in Preview and save as a .Jpg.

I am now convinced that any calendar can be used to create a notification - and looking at iCal with Activity Monitor I note that iCal is tied pretty deeply into the OS. That leads me to think that there is no way to stop these short of disconnecting from the Internet. If the bad actor(s) can insert a notification to a random-named, dormant calendar there is every reason to have Apple Tech Support on the job.

I had this issue about 2 weeks ago, and sent an e-mail to reportphishing@apple.com. But now I received more, about 7 in total, I changed my password in the meantime, but I kept on receiving. So my question is now, can I send attachments to reportphising@apple.com? I want to attach the print screens of the calendar invites to see exactly.