Just a quick heads-up that Google Calendar spam is now a thing.  I woke up to a recurring event to claim a free Samsung watch!  Hooray!  Here’s another example:

Spammers & hackers will likely be attempting to auto-add calendar events to yourcalendar soon.  The best way to address this is to simply disable the “auto-add” feature as described below.

To disable the “automatically add invite” feature in Google Calendar:

• Go to Google Calendar on your computer
• Click the cog in the upper right, then hit settings
• On the list on the left, click “Event settings”
• Look for the “Automatically add invitations” option. Change this to “No, only show invitations to which I have responded”

If you see a repeating spam event on your calendar, you’ll be able to remove them in batches by:

1. Clicking one of the recurring spam events
2. Clicking the three-dot button near the top right of the pop up
3. Hitting “Report as spam”.

IMPORTANT: Many of these spam events reportedly have malicious links in them, so please be extra cautious when clicking links in calendar invites you don’t recognize.

[Further Reading]

Let me know if you have any questions,

Toby

p.s. Even though spammers are prevalent, there’s still a lot of good in the world!  We’ve just gotta look for it!