If you’ve been annoyed by iCloud Calendar spam over the past few weeks, Apple may be working on a solution.
Recently, Apple has added a new “Report Junk” feature to its calendar program on iCloud.com. lets users remove spammy invites from their calendar and reports the sender to Apple for further investigation.
The feature is currently only available on Apple’s iCloud.com Calendar web app but it is likely to roll out to the iOS and Mac native Calendar in a future software update.
The calendar spam first started appearing in early November, with some Apple users seeing a deluge of calendar invites from unsolicited people (usually with Chinese names) that used the description field of calendar invites to ‘advertise’ junkware and various physical products.
The issue peaked around Black Friday with spammers trying to capitalize on the shopping event. In worst case scenarios, users would follow the links to unknown locations, although most wound up ignoring the unwanted events by using the month view.
Up until now, there was no good way to combat the spam, as rejecting the invitations simply alerted the spammers that the email address was active, thereby leading to even more spam.
Although the change will no doubt come to iPhone and iPad natively soon, for the time being users must visit iCloud.com in their browser to access the feature. The Report Junk button appears for calendars invites from unknown senders; that is, invites from people not in your contacts.
If you are receiving junk advertorial iCloud Calendar invites, here’s how to fix it:
Visit iCloud.com. Login with your Apple ID.
Find the invite in the web calendar UI.
Press the Report Junk link.
The invite will now disappear from all of your synced calendars, and the spam sender will be reported to Apple.
The new “Report Junk” feature is expected as a forthcoming update for iOS and macOS, albeit a specific date has yet to be released for the fix. However, right now the best way to fix the Calendar spam is to visit iCloud.com.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via 9to5Mac