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Spammers have found a way to add unwanted phishing and scam events to people's Google calendars without their permission. Here's how to prevent spammers from adding items to your calendar without your permission.
As explained in detail about Whitson Gordon, former editor of How-To Geek, Google Calendar (by default) displays event invitations, whether or not the user has accepted them. Spammers use this flaw to overwhelm the calendars of people with malicious links and other derogatory texts.
Stop the calendar by adding invitations automatically
One of Google Calendar's default settings is to automatically add invitations to events in the calendar. To disable this option, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen and select "Settings".
Then choose "Event Settings" in the left sidebar.
Look for the drop-down menu labeled "Automatically add invitations". Click on the arrow.
Finally, select "No, only show the invitations I have answered".
Stop the calendar since adding events from Gmail
Google Calendar also extracts events directly from Gmail. If someone sends you an invitation via email – sometimes even when it is sent to the junk folder – this is reflected in your calendar. To disable this feature, return to the Settings menu by clicking on the gear icon and selecting "Settings".
Then choose "Gmail Events" in the left sidebar.
Uncheck "Automatically add Gmail events to my calendar".
Google Calendar will ask you to confirm this action. Click "OK" to approve the change.
Hide rejected calendar invitations
If you have read and declined unsolicited calendar events, they will still be displayed in Google Calendar, but they will be barred. The reason is that it continues to display the denied events by default.
To turn off this feature, return to the Google Calendar Settings menu. As mentioned earlier, you get there by clicking on the gear icon and selecting "Settings".
Once there, choose "Display Options" located in the left sidebar.
Clear the "Show Rejected Events" check box to remove the reduced invitations.
Hide denied events on mobile
Curiously, when you decide to hide the denied events from the desktop view, they always appear in Android, iPhone and iPad applications. If you want them not to be displayed, start the mobile app, open the overflow menu by tapping the burger icon in the upper left corner, scroll down and press "Settings".
Then select "General".
Finally, disable "Show Rejected Events".
A increasing number of people online reported that this tactic was used to spam their Google calendars. At the time of writing this article, Google has not released any incident response. However, some of these default settings will be disabled in the future.
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