Apple Devices Calendar Spam

I own Apple devices and started getting ray-ban and Michael Kors ads in early November.  It was a small nuisance which I completely ignored given that I was focused on work and other personal life matters.  However, Black Friday brought many more ads filling up my Calendar events and I wanted to delete them so that I could concentrate on events important to me.  These events are invitations which the recipients is asked to Accept, Maybe, or Decline with no option that lets you delete or hide.  Responding with any of the three options would just let spammers know they have a “live” functioning person to the spamming event invitation and would result in increased spam as that information would be spread to other spammers.  So, I had to figure out how to get rid of the nuisance event invitations without showing my existence.  

It is possible to deal with using the following three steps in the Calendar application:  (1) Create a Spam folder, (2) turn notification of events in the Spam folder off, (3) move spam event invitations to the Spam folder.  

Open Calendar application.  

(1) Create a SPAM folder:

At the bottom of the Calendar are three options:  Today, Calendars, and Inbox.  The Inbox indicated how many invitation events are available.  Do not go there.  Click the Calendars.

The next thing I did was create a new Calendar using the Add Calendar option available through Edit Calendars page, which is the final option presented in the second section of the page, headed with ICLOUD.  To get there, at the top left of the Calendars page which lists all of your Calendars, is an Edit option which invokes the Edit Calendars page.  Scroll past the first section which lists your email Calendars and locate the Add Calendar option at the end of the ICLOUD Calendar section.  

The Add Calendar screen appears where I entered the word, “SPAM” into the Calendar Name field and then clicked Done at the top right of the screen.

 The SPAM Calendar now is listed under the ICLOUD section of the Edit Calendars screen.  Click Done (top left of the Edit Calendars screen).

(2) Turn notification of events in the SPAM folder off:

The Calendars screen returns.  If a check mark is displayed beside the SPAM calendar, then click it to remove the check mark.  The All iCloud check mark will also be removed if one was there.  This move ensures that events in the SPAM folder will not be displayed to annoy you and you have not done anything to signal to spammers that you exist.  Click Done (top right of the Calendars screen) to return to your calendar.  

(3) Move spam event invitations to the SPAM folder:

To move the annoying invitations to the SPAM folder, go to the individual event and click it to invoke the Event Details screen.  The second field of the event is the Calendar which you can change to the SPAM Calendar that you just set up.

This work-around will help until Apple creates an option to deal with these annoying unexpected event invitations from spammers.  

 

 

Related Images:

Print Friendly, PDF & Email