Apple Introduces 'Report Junk' Option To Deal With iCloud Calendar Spam Invites

Apple is rolling out a fix for the iCloud Calendar spam issue that has plagued users over the past few weeks. On iCloud.com, reports 9to5Mac, the company has added a new Report Junk feature. This lets users remove spammy invites from their calendar and reports the sender to Apple for further investigation. From the report: 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. Since early November, some Apple users were 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.

Unacceptable for professional use

[DogDude]

Yet another reason why Apple products are unsuitable for business use. Getting calendar spam shouldn't be the user's problem. It should be the provider's problem. If for some reason we got spam into our Outlook Calendars at work, we'd switch providers in a heartbeat.

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[known_coward_69]

there are a dozen calendar providers you can use other than apple or icloud so it's not a big deal for professionals

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Anonymous Coward]

from outside your org invites are just an email with an ics file attached, so you have all your standard mail filtering already in place
the problem here is that these are coming from other icloud users, so all that inbound spam filtering isn't being called for these invites

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[SeaFox]

from outside your org invites are just an email with an ics file attached, so you have all your standard mail filtering already in place
the problem here is that these are coming from other icloud users, so all that inbound spam filtering isn't being called for these invites

You can change iCloud's calendaring setting very easily from the website so invites comes in as emails -- just like the Outlook setup you mentioning. It's just not set that way by default.

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[DogDude]

We use an external provider. Never seen a single instance of calendar spam. And, in terms of email spam, our provider does a super good job of it. We see very, very little actual spam. But, since we're paying, that's what I'd expect.

how about just a delete

[fermion]

My problem is that I can only accept or reject a Calendar request. There should be an option to simply delete it without notifying the spammer.

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[CaptnCrud]

Or you can log into icloud and turn off the push to app option and do push to email. Even under normal circumstances in a business only network environment I wouldn't want this feature on.

half the problem

[ausekilis]

What about junk texts?

I get the occasional crap text, no idea how they got my number... but if its tied to email or appleID instead... then apple has more work to do.

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[nine-times]

From Apple [apple.com]:

You can report iMessages that look like spam or junk from the Messages app. If you get an iMessage from someone who's not saved in your Contacts, you'll see a Report Junk link under the message. Tap the link to forward the sender's information and the message to Apple.

Why wont they do this with Phone calls?

[jeepville]

I get many pre-recorded phone calls that if you try to call the number back its bogus aka not in service. Would be great if when you phone ring it would say mostly likely spam based on score. or after a call you could report as spam like the junk imessages I get.

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[SeaFox]

I get many pre-recorded phone calls that if you try to call the number back its bogus aka not in service.

Would be great if when you phone ring it would say mostly likely spam based on score. or after a call you could report as spam like the junk imessages I get.

The reason they don't it with phone calls is obviously money.
Allowing telemarketers to place calls allows phone companies to charge them for the calls. If the calls were not allowed to be connected based on a "spam score" the phone company could not charge for the call.

Calendaring invites costs Apple money in resources to manage them. So reducing spammy users helps them.

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[Just Some Guy]

They do. Or more to the point, they provide an API so that third party apps can, and in a privacy-preserving manner:

• - Caller ID apps can fetch or generate lists of spam numbers and publish them to the phone's internal storage. It also set options for how to handle different kinds of unwanted calls (spam, fraud, etc.).
• - When someone calls, your phone checks against that pre-stored list to categorize the caller. If it's a hit, the phone uses the settings from the previous step to either flag the caller so