How do I stop spam iCloud Calendar and Photos invites?

If anyone has found a real solution please post with a title that's easy to find. Thanks to Black Friday my calendar app is worthless with hundreds of spam sales invitations. This is a serious issue and a huge vulnerability for our phones.

Apple, wow. Just wow. Why do they call themselves innovative and people keep buying their exploding sheep phones? They call themselves innovative; they release the same product for 15 years. They model themselves after progressive freedom and yet they lock down their users worse than a fascist dictator holding an election. I cryed a tear one time for the machinehead believers in apple.

(hmm, my iPad heats up browsing the apple website. Lol!)

I've tried to report this to Apple but it seems impossible to find a direct email to contact—I sent mine to support@apple.com and basically got a bounce back.

Here's a temp fix for the iCloud Calendar invite spam, courtesy of AppleTips

On your iPhone it's pretty easy:

Step 1: Open the Calendar app and tap Calendars at the bottom of the screen. Next, tap the Edit option.

Step 2: Use the Edit button to add a Calendar to the list. Name the calendar Spam (or whatever you like). Next, tap on Done.

Step 3: To return to the calendar, tap the Done option.

Step 4: Next, open the spam invite and tap the Calendar field (where it has a colored dot and says which calendar the invite is on).

Step 5: Select the new Spam calendar you have created. Repeat this process for all the invites.

Step 6: Return to Calendars. Tap on the i-button located next to the Spam calendar.

Step 7: Scroll down. Next, tap "Delete Calendar" option.

Voila! No more spam invites for iCloud Calendar.

Hi I have also started receiving spam invitations recently and from one alleged company - Oakley. The invites are for Ray-Ban Oakley. I too cannot have them removed and have complained to the Oakley company who are trying to duck the issue by implying we should block them !!! Anyone out there knows how to block them - Hint hint Apple - then please tell us. This is just the tip of a big stampede next year by advertisers to hit the apple community through calendars.

Hi daversteam

Posted my concern on the same before seeing your solution.

I had tried this and dumped all there into a junk calendar but hesitated hitting the delete button. Whilst they didn't appear in the main calendars any more the inbox still showed them waiting.

Your comment gave me the confidence to hit the delete

And yep - all gone.

Great

You made a mac lover happy again

Cheers

While this solution is fine for one or two I have received hundreds of these over the last three days and have never responded to any. They keep coming offering sales on items. Apple needs to step up and allow us to limit to invites through email only or from our contacts list. This makes the calendar useless and opens us all up to vulnerabilities.

Braddoh,

Fortunately, there is a setting to allow you to push your calendar invites to an email instead of handling them within Calendar:

1. Login with your Apple ID on the web at iCloud.com.

2. Click on the Calendar icon

3. Click the gear icon at the very bottom left of your calendar.

4. Select Preferences...

5. Select Advanced.

6. For the Invitations option settings, select the option that will have calendar invites emailed to you instead of in-app notifications.

This should cause all Calendar invites to me emailed to the address associated with your Apple ID. You can choose to respond to the invite within the email, if it's legitimate, or simply trash the email with no response if it's spam.

First off, thank you.

But that fact that you have to tell people to log into a web site and perform a 6-step process says something. This should never happen in the first place. There needs to be a few more options in the pull down then just accept/decline. One of them is "blacklist this person" But to prevent even the first occurrence maybe only those on a white list (your contacts?) can do something so annoying as cause a pop-up notification to appear.

But thanks, you gave me enough info that I can do a work around until Apple fixes this

I agree with you my phone is plaque with these invites. I now question how and what other info they may have. Time to look into possible legal action if its not RESOLVED in a timely matter.

Tho a better easier work around is to log into iCloud.com click on calendar the click on the cog dial on the lower right side then go into preferences then click advanced and scroll down to where it says receive invites by email rather then calendar at least it will go there and you can trash it never seeing it on the calendar

This happened to me, a Black Friday invite, obviously spam using part of my email name. Frustrated that Apple haven't responded with an easier option but I followed your procedure and it has worked. Many thanks. This was the first time this has happened and I hope the last, not holding my breath!! Thanks again.

My only access is on an iPad or iPhone. I can't make it go to the desktop site. It just wants to go to the iPhone app. How do I edit the iCloud things as suggested here (using a mobile device)? Thank you. I'm not tech advanced.

I agree. Apparently "Decline" is basically the same as "Accept all future spams to this iCal." Thankfully only one of the TEN emails this event was targeted to is similar to mine, so I didn't get the event TEN times. Also Dear Apple, Please create an iCal fix that does not require an update to Mac OS Sierra, since that is not compatible with my important audio software.

you have to download google chrome on your ipad as an app. Then you can go to iCloud.com using chrome. Three bars or dots in top right pulls down to say something like go to a desktop site. Do that. Fiddle with settings there. You can create a "rule" putting the spammers email and website there to block them. Just play with it, youll figure it out.

If you decline, they will know you have an active account. Log into iCloud. Select calendar. Select preferences, advanced. Check box to have invites sent to email (instead of calendar). From there, your email will filter to spam.

Same thing happened on my phone and I got 7 invites in 4 days. I did not respond. I went to settings, calendar, accounts. I have multiple accounts that feed my calendar. I clicked on the iCloud account, and turned off calendar. It asked if the iCloud invites should be deleted. I clicked yes and All the garbage left my calendar.