How To Stop Google Calendar Spam [1]

Google Calendar users have been receiving increasing amounts of spam in the form of calendar invitations. Changing a few settings can stop the flow.

Spammers are scouring the internet for Gmail addresses and using them to add false events to Google Calendar. Gmail, Calendar, Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Translate, and other Google services are integrated with each other, making it easy for a spammer to send messages that trigger a Google Calendar invitation that appears as an event in Google Calendar.

Thankfully changing a few settings in Google Calendar should stop them from appearing. There are two parts to stopping Calendar spam, preventing Google Calendar from automatically adding invitations, and stopping events that are sent to you through Gmail.

Prevent Google Calendar from adding events automatically:
Open Google Calendar [3] in your browser
Click or tap the gear icon in the upper right corner and choose "Settings".
From the menu on the left, click or tap "Event settings"
Click or tap the arrow next to "Automatically add invitations" and choose “No, only show invitations to which I have responded.”

Stop events sent through Gmail:
Go to Google Calendar [3]in your browser
Click or tap the gear icon in the upper right corner and choose "Settings".
From the menu on the left, click or tap "Events from Gmail"
Uncheck the box next to “Automatically add events from Gmail to my calendar”
A dialog box saying “You’ll no longer see events automatically added from your email. Previously added events from Gmail will be removed” will appear
Tap or click "OK"

Changes should be made in a web browser. The Android app has options to disable “Events from Gmail” and decline events. Preventing events being added automatically is in the browser settings of Calendar.

In Android, you can make sure that declined events is off by tapping the three line menu in the upper left, select "Settings", look for "Show declined events" and make sure it's off. To prevent events being added from Gmail, go to the three line menu in the upper left, select "Settings" and choose "Events from Gmail" for all your Gmail accounts.

If you've received any of these invitations, you can delete past events two ways: delete one spam event then select choose to delete all future events and all events will be removed. Or, double click on the spam event, and at the top, click or tap "More Actions" and choose "Report as Spam". All the events will be automatically removed and reported as spam to Google.

It's been possible to send spam using Google services since 2017. For some reason there's an uptick in the quantity lately, enough that Google has made an announcement [4]about it on their support site:
"We're aware of the spam occurring in Calendar and are working diligently to resolve this issue. We'll post updates to this thread as they become available. Thank you for your patience".

Until Google comes up with options to deal with spam appearing in Calendar, changing these settings is your best bet.

(h/t Android Authority [5])

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