iPhone users aren’t having a good time of it recently, what with the battery drain issues that have arisen since the iOS 10.1.1 update and now the increasing amount of ‘calendar spam’.
Users are reporting a rise in spam calendar invites for deals and sales, which began appearing last week and are thought to have been started by Chinese spammers.
As the BBC reports, the invites are not just for fake deals, and will often take the form of photo-sharing alerts.
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Those affected by the mass scamming will see invites that look like any other iCloud calendar invite, and ask users to either accept or decline the invite.
The first thing to note is that declining the invites, though it seems like the thing to do, is a bad idea, as it simply lets the spammers know they’ve managed to target an active email address.
Apple is yet to issue a fix, however, so for the time being iPhone users will have to take advantage of a few ad-hoc workarounds to escape the irritating pop-ups and notifications.
First off,
It’s not ideal, as you’ll also stop other calendar notifications coming through, but it should only be a temporary measure.
Alternatively you can tell notifications to go direct to your email by logging into iCloud.com, going to Calendar, clicking on the Cog icon in the bottom-left corner and going to Prefences>Advanced.
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From here, you should be able to enable the email option which will stop your phone or tablet sending you in-app notifications, sending them to you via email instead.
You should then be able to use your email settings to filter out the spam notification emails, though you’ll have to be careful not to miss genuine invites.
Another way to get around the annoying notifications is to go to Settings>iCloud and disable the option for Calendar to sync to the cloud.
This will stop the calendar syncing with your other other accounts and email, which is the reason why the notifications get pushed to your phone in the first place.
Again, this will stop you receiving genuine notifications for invitations from friends, family, and colleagues, so it’s not an ideal solution.
Hopefully Apple will issue a fix for this most annoying of problems in the near future, so stay tuned for the latest.
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Let us know if you’ve been affected by the spam calendar invites in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
