Despite all the perfection of iOS, even it has a number of global shortcomings that for some reason Apple has not corrected for years. In fact, there are not many of them, but they are all extremely revealing and even textbook. For example, calendar spam. This problem has been around for many years, but Cupertino still hasn't gotten around to doing anything about it to prevent spammers from pestering iCloud users and annoying them by forcing them to add a bunch of unwanted events to their calendar.
Are you fed up with spam on your calendar? You are not the only one
Why you should subscribe to iCloud. At least for the basic tariff
Apple device users have started complaining about iCloud calendar spam again. According to them, the attackers have organized a new wave of mailings that cannot be easily gotten rid of. Despite Apple's targeted attempts to correct the situation, this did not yield any practical results.
The device is infected: spam has started to arrive
“Attention, the calendar is infected with a virus” - the iPhone creates a notification for the user, counting on actions to clean the system of malware. The gadget's built-in protection does not always recognize the entry of a virus with other programs, files, or actions of associated users (the function works on a new operating system), but it can determine that the built-in software is not working correctly.
You can understand that a virus in your iPhone calendar is sending advertisements without system notifications. Opening your organizer or home screen with information about the date, time, notes: the smartphone begins to offer annoying content from different companies, invitations to meetings, as well as other information for which you did not subscribe.
How to report a suspicious calendar offer
If you receive intrusive invitations on your iPhone, most likely the reason is not a virus, but mailings organized by scammers. In order to notify developers about spam, you must:
- Open the invitation through the Calendar app.
- Click on the “Report spam” button.
- Select the “Delete and report as spam” option.
If you need to hide a subscription, just go to the Calendar application, click on the desired name and select the account that should be hidden. You can hide all subscriptions at once both through a smartphone and through a MAC computer.
How to delete infected reminders?
You can solve the problem of removing a virus from a calendar on an iPhone by unsubscribing in the same section of the menu.
To do this, perform the following algorithm:
- Launch your “Calendar”;
- Open a page that contains advertising;
- Activate the unsubscribe function at the bottom of the screen;
- Confirm the action.
If necessary, reboot the device with the new settings.
Disable Place Suggestions
Another likely source of Calendar spam is the Place Suggestions feature. To disable this feature, open your iPhone or iPad's settings and go to the Calendar section.
Here at the very bottom of the screen there should be an item “Place offers”. To turn it off, simply flip the switch to the Off position.
How to remove a virus through an account?
An account is a convenient tool for quickly searching and removing complex, camouflaged viruses or spam messages. For example, the question arises of how to remove “Vulcan” from the calendar, which appears even after deletion.
User procedure:
- "Accounts" menu;
- Go to the “Accounts, Passwords” section;
- Selecting the “Subscriptions” tab;
We are looking for a fragment that interferes with the normal operation of the device. Delete.
Delete Events calendar on iPhone
If you are still receiving spam, the solution to this problem is to delete your Events calendar account. You can do this as follows:
- Go to the “Settings” section.
- Go to "Passwords and Accounts".
- Select “Subscription calendars” (Events).
- Finally, you need to tap on the “Delete account” button.
It is important to consider that in new versions of iOS “Subscription calendars” are located in the “Mail” / “Passwords and Accounts” section
Spam from Google
Installed Google may send unwanted notifications. The iPhone calendar virus appears along with the addition of associated users who can edit events or create invitations.
Removing such a problem must be done through a computer. Log in to the Google application or website, enter your password/login.
Follow the instructions:
- Find the “Reminders” item;
- Select the “Invitations” section (contains all allowed notifications received by the user);
- We find unwanted messages, mark them and delete them.
You can disable the “Automatically add invitations” option. Google won't be able to add ads or messages on its own. The user will personally select them manually.
Who is sending spam and why is it displayed on the calendar?
Most often, advertising messages that appear in the calendar of an iOS device are associated with activated synchronization with the Gmail mailbox. Fraudsters register a large number of addresses in the popular free Google email service and launch mass mailings of advertising, which are quite difficult to unsubscribe from. The main disadvantage of such mailings is that notifications appear on the smartphone’s desktop (even if the display is in a locked state).
Manual blocking does not solve the problem, since after deleting incoming messages, they will continue to arrive, but from other email addresses. Attackers use a huge number of different e-mails, so it is virtually impossible to add them all to the spam list. However, there are ways to get rid of intrusive alerts.
How to Remove Spam from Calendar on iPhone
How to Unsubscribe from Reminders in iPhone Calendar Now you have a new calendar. To hide it, just uncheck the box next to it. Now we need to make sure that all invitations are sent to this calendar. Choose one and send it to your Spam calendar. Do this to everyone. Then you need to delete the calendar. How to Unsubscribe from Mailing in Calendar on iPhone It’s worse when spam does not come in emails, but immediately appears in the Calendar application.
This way, the sender will understand that your mailbox is real and active.
How to disable spam in Mail (read more...)
If you receive spam messages in your iCloud calendar, there is a way to get rid of it. This can be done through the Mail app for iOS and Mac.
Completion - we are waiting for an update
Of course, the methods described above should be considered half measures at best. Both ideas presented by us have their disadvantages. At the moment, however, there are no best methods to protect against spam sent to iCloud accounts.
However, you have to trust that Apple will quickly fix the problem discussed here. You can expect more advanced filters to come with the next iOS and iCloud updates that will allow you to block ads and spam in apps. Until then, however, we must wait.
If, however, you have any problems with the guide discussed here, please comment. We will try to answer any requests.
Where does iPhone get calendar virus?
iPhone calendar spam is similar to phishing emails. Hackers create text messages, emails, web pages, and pop-ups with links that closely resemble the original page. And when the user unknowingly clicks on these links, it takes them to the Calendar app. Even if you press back or dismiss the event, the iPhone's default settings are such that these hackers can still send spam calendar events.
Apple is partly to blame for this, since the company allows anyone, including people outside your contacts, to send calendar invitations to your iPhone. Since the user doesn't expect spam links in the Calendar app, they can click the link in the event, which (most likely) will take them to a phishing page. These pages may contain hacking scripts and malware that may compromise your personal information.
Can such calendar notifications be harmful?
Despite the fact that this has nothing to do with viruses, there is still some harm from these calendar notifications:
- Of course it's annoying. Nobody wants to have a bunch of advertising notifications on their phone.
- There is a high probability that the links in such advertisements contain something fraudulent. Therefore, if you accidentally clicked on a link in such a calendar, do not download anything from there to your iPhone and do not register anywhere. It is possible to receive a virus or steal personal data.
- Constantly arriving notifications use up the phone's resources to a certain extent, which negatively affects its overall performance.
- A user who receives hundreds of spam notifications in their calendar cannot fully use this application. After all, if you set up your own important event there, the notification about it will be lost among the many advertising messages.
You may be interested in this: The iPhone does not turn on, the apple lights up and goes out.
To prevent these types of notifications from appearing in your Events calendar in the future, you should be more careful in responding to subscription requests. There is no need to recklessly click on the first button you come across when a subscription request appears. Read what they offer you, what kind of subscription and what you can click. If you do not need such a subscription, you can unsubscribe in the notification that appears. Notifications may look like the screenshot below.
And if, nevertheless, you accidentally agreed to the newsletter, then the instructions above will help you unsubscribe and delete entries in the Events calendar on iOS.
How to find out if there is a virus on your iPhone?
You can suspect a virus on your iPhone if:
- the battery began to discharge faster;
- the smartphone began to overheat;
- Pop-up notifications began to appear when the browser was closed;
- network traffic on the smartphone has increased;
- unknown applications appeared;
- phone
bill has increased .
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Why does spam appear?
If someone has your email address and access to change the calendar on the device, then they can add an email to participate in the event. This event automatically displays a notification in the application. The more such events, the more notifications.
Such a system was supposed to make life easier for iPhone owners. The developers wanted the user to be able to create an event, add friends to it, and send reminders to everyone. In fact, life has become easier only for spammers.
How to turn off the calendar
If you generally do not use a standard calendar and prefer a third-party one, then you can disable it. So, to turn it off you need to do the following:
- Go to Phone Settings;
- Go to the iCloud section;
- Click on the switch next to the Calendar application.
And of course, to ensure even greater security, you can turn off calendar invitations. This can be done using the following steps:
- Go to the ICloud.com website through a browser and enter your username and password to log in.
- Afterwards, select the Calendar application, and then in the lower left corner you will see a gear icon, which you should click on.
- There you need to select "Preferences".
- When you see “Advanced,” click on “Receive invitations to events like.”
- Several options will appear here; select “Receive by email.”
- Afterwards, all that remains is to save the changes by clicking on the appropriate button.
This is how you can further protect yourself and generally disable the iPhone calendar.
Reasons for spam mailings appearing in the calendar
Fraudsters try to gain user attention by sending spam. Their goal is similar, but they act differently. Some put out advertisements with a fictitious winning of a large sum. Naive users may believe, click on the advertisement and, in the hope of getting their wealth, enter the card number from which the scammers will then write off all the funds.
The second option is fake links to various events and so on. The goal is to take possession of the ICloud login data, which you yourself will enter on the “fake” site. Thanks to this, scammers will have access to your personal data, as well as account data and passwords.
There is no way to get rid of scammers on the Internet now; they are everywhere and use a variety of methods to get what they want. But when it comes to them compulsively slipping their promotional offers into your phone, something needs to be done.
Alternative ways to unsubscribe from mailing lists
Another way to deactivate the newsletter will help if you can’t do everything as described in the previous instructions:
iPhone settings icon
The disadvantage of this method is that notifications will not be received about events you have planned, which can sometimes be inconvenient.
To avoid being disturbed by messages from your email, it is recommended that you simply do not synchronize your device with your Google account.
Disable third party app access
Notifications about events from other applications may also appear in the Calendar. To solve this problem, you need to open the settings and go to the “Privacy - Calendars” section.
Here you will see a list of applications that have access to Calendar. In this case, it's just Google Calendar, but other apps may appear here as well.
Disable here any suspicious applications that you think may be sending spam.
