8 ms·

Related to this bug, some time ago I started getting spam on my Google Calendar. Not sure if Google ever fixed it, but basically Google would automatically add

Related to this bug, some time ago I started getting spam on my Google Calendar. Not sure if Google ever fixed it, but basically Google would automatically add events to your calendar when you got an invite in your email. Honestly, it's a nice feature; saves a couple clicks every time I get an invite. The bug is that it applied even if the email was spam. There was no workaround, other than disabling the feature completely. Quite a pain. And yes, just like this bug, you'd get lovely "eat my pussy" events popping up on your calendar and reminders. Thanks Google, you're the best /s

mjayhn 6y ago
This hit a bunch of us about a year ago, maybe two years, I forget. It was incredibly annoying and made me completely stop relying on gmail for calendar stuff.
dmurray 6y ago
I used to get these in Russian (I don't speak Russian and have no links with Russia). The worst part was I couldn't delete them from the Android app, which is like probably everyone else the only place I ever see my Google calendar. The functionality to delete them was hidden at calendar.google.com or somewhere I'd never had occasion to use. I don't get this spam any more, so I guess Google fixed it at some level.
4kevinking 6y ago
I'm actually getting this spam now (started a couple months ago). Would love advice on how to get rid of it!
- fpgaminer 6y ago
  I think this is the guide I used awhile back to disable the feature: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-calendar-1835810050 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-c...
- phs318u 6y ago
  > Would love advice on how to get rid of it! This will sound facetious, but I mean it sincerely. Change email provider. I was an original "invite only" user of GMail. Eventually, I got so sick of Google's complete u-turn on their original philosophy that I changed, despite the cost in time and effort that decision entailed. It's worth it. But I will recommend you choose providers carefully. If you're not paying for it in some way (e.g. Fastmail), be concerned. Also, the ability to use your own domain is a huge boon (you'll never have to go through the excessive email-change pain again).
aahhahahaaa 6y ago
They have not fixed it. I wish I could turn off the feature entirely, but I still occasionally get Russian spam events on my calendar. They also try to notify me at ~3am (fortunately I turn notifications completely off at night). The emails themselves land in my spam folder... but no one said "hey, maybe calendar events shouldn't be created from the spam folder" at inception, so I guess it'll never be implemented. I report them as spam when I get them, but I also discovered that I can't report calendar events as spam in the mobile app.
- fpgaminer 6y ago
  If it's any help, I _think_ this is the guide I used to disable the feature: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-calendar-1835810050 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-c... It was awhile ago, but that looks like the right link and jives with my current settings. I don't get any more spam on my calendar, but obviously need to manually respond Yes to any email invites to get them to show on the calendar.
erichurkman 6y ago
It's used not just by spammers, but by sales reps, too. Dell recently did this to about half a dozen people on my team. 'Q2 Budget Review', which sounds official, but is really a Dell rep trying to sell you junk that magically pops up on your calendar _even if you mark their message as spam_. Dirty way to get by executive assistants, too.
- kstrauser 6y ago
  That sounds like an excellent way to make me ban all inbound traffic from that vendor.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    It's going directly from the vendor to Google. How exactly would you block that traffic?
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      You may not be able to block the calendar spam with current tools, but if you're in a decision-making role, you can block e-mails or blacklist the vendor so your purchasing department knows that they cannot order from them.
- pavel_lishin 6y ago
  > It's used not just by spammers, but by sales reps, too. Not sure there's a distinction there.
  - superkuh 6y ago
    Spammers don't have the corporate liability protections that allow corporate employees to spam without worry. So really, spammers are better people.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  > Dell recently did this to about half a dozen people on my team. 'Q2 Budget Review', If you put this shit on my calendar, I will never purchase a product from you. I will additionally, at my own discretion, use it as proof that you have had a data breach and are unable to keep your accounts safe since no real company would really do this on purpose.
malwarebytess 6y ago
I still get this. It was bad enough on my "sign up for shit" email address that I had to disconnect that account from my smartphone because it kept spamming me with notifications in my calendar to "earn $1500 a week working at home!"
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Considering 40h/week that would be 1500/40 = $35/h. Kinda low for a freelancer to work from home. Tell spammers their game is outdated, they should at least double it :P
  - wiremaus 6y ago
    That's big money for a lot of Americans, even ones using Google calendar. It's effective bait.
    - malwarebytess 6y ago
      $72,000/year. Individual median income is around $30,000.
wincy 6y ago
You just reminded me why I decoupled my google calendar from my iPhone calendar a few years ago. Just the other day I was thinking I’d like them up, but something made me feel like I shouldn’t...
Simulacra 6y ago
Google has very little incentive to fix the problem, and outsourced support personnel have even less incentive to care. The entire google forums read like passing the buck.
- fpgaminer 6y ago
  > Google has very little incentive to fix the problem A long time ago, in an internet far, far away, Gmail was brand new. The big feature? No spam. Back then we'd hide our email addresses in cryptic text and images. It was a private thing, shared between friends. If the light of the internet were to ever shine upon your unobfuscated email address, woe be onto you as the plague of SPAM descended. There were even entire websites dedicate to the purpose of "email address images". It was ... a wild time. Then, GMAIL! For the first time since the dawn of SPAM we could post our addresses in plaintext, in the light of day. We didn't hide them like dirty underwear. The whole WORLD could see our email addresses, and we didn't have a care in the world. The smell of fresh email was in the air, unbesmirched by SPAM. Perhaps the young ones forget. Perhaps Google has forgotten. Lost to the sands of Calendar spam...
  - Simulacra 6y ago
    I remember… I was at Stanford in 2000 and the future looked so bright.
- eximius 6y ago
  Even internally this bug is not prioritized. In their defense, it's not clear what the behaviour should be. Against them, there are options that, while not perfect, are better than the status quo, even if the user must manually set them.
  - breakingcups 6y ago
    In this case, the email is already flagged as spam in Gmail, but the calendar invite still gets added. To me it seems pretty clear what the behaviour should be. If flagged as spam, do not add to calendar.
toss1 6y ago
Another lovely Google feature that lasted for about 10sec. after I discovered it: Booked a flight, got the receipt through Gmail. Google then auto-populated my calendar with the flights - fine. They also populated it with a hotel reservation, and a link saying I hadn't yet confirmed the reservation for Hilton. I was going to stay with family, w/no intention of staying in a hotel. I couldn't believe the blatant hijacking and spamming involved here from my private info - bad enough if they'd merely spammed a hotel advert for those dates. Contacted Google, no way to turn it off without turning off the entire feature. Done. Permanently. I couldn't believe anyone could think this was a good idea.
- scubbo 6y ago
  YMMV, but I personally think that's a reasonable level of intrusion. I'd prefer less; but for the convenience of "auto-populated calendar events", I'm willing to swallow a little unobtrusive upselling for a very justifiable assumption ("person who is travelling _probably_ wants a hotel").
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    Having Google put fake hotel reservation confirmation links in your calendar is a "reasonable level of intrusion?" It's amazing what we've become conditioned to.
    - zerocrates 6y ago
      Is this something Google actually did/does? It doesn't really fit with my experience of them. Now, if the confirmation email contained this upsell in text or in schema.org metadata or whatever and Google pulled it over, that feels very much like something they would do.
      - ojosilva 6y ago
        In my experience that's what happened. Some ad text on the bottom of the email got picked up (ie "hotels available during your trip"). It had "hotel" and a date range. That's all a faulty Google AI needs to create a hotel stay event. In fact I'd adventure to say this is an exploit by the airline upsell team, not Google.
ethagnawl 6y ago
I'd been wondering about this phenomenon for years. However, it happened infrequently and was never enough of a bother to dig into.

mjayhn 6y ago

This hit a bunch of us about a year ago, maybe two years, I forget. It was incredibly annoying and made me completely stop relying on gmail for calendar stuff.

dmurray 6y ago

I used to get these in Russian (I don't speak Russian and have no links with Russia). The worst part was I couldn't delete them from the Android app, which is like probably everyone else the only place I ever see my Google calendar. The functionality to delete them was hidden at calendar.google.com or somewhere I'd never had occasion to use. I don't get this spam any more, so I guess Google fixed it at some level.

4kevinking 6y ago

I'm actually getting this spam now (started a couple months ago). Would love advice on how to get rid of it!

fpgaminer 6y ago
I think this is the guide I used awhile back to disable the feature: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-calendar-1835810050 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-c...
phs318u 6y ago
> Would love advice on how to get rid of it! This will sound facetious, but I mean it sincerely. Change email provider. I was an original "invite only" user of GMail. Eventually, I got so sick of Google's complete u-turn on their original philosophy that I changed, despite the cost in time and effort that decision entailed. It's worth it. But I will recommend you choose providers carefully. If you're not paying for it in some way (e.g. Fastmail), be concerned. Also, the ability to use your own domain is a huge boon (you'll never have to go through the excessive email-change pain again).

aahhahahaaa 6y ago

They have not fixed it. I wish I could turn off the feature entirely, but I still occasionally get Russian spam events on my calendar. They also try to notify me at ~3am (fortunately I turn notifications completely off at night). The emails themselves land in my spam folder... but no one said "hey, maybe calendar events shouldn't be created from the spam folder" at inception, so I guess it'll never be implemented. I report them as spam when I get them, but I also discovered that I can't report calendar events as spam in the mobile app.

fpgaminer 6y ago
If it's any help, I _think_ this is the guide I used to disable the feature: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-calendar-1835810050 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-keep-spam-out-of-your-google-c... It was awhile ago, but that looks like the right link and jives with my current settings. I don't get any more spam on my calendar, but obviously need to manually respond Yes to any email invites to get them to show on the calendar.

erichurkman 6y ago

It's used not just by spammers, but by sales reps, too. Dell recently did this to about half a dozen people on my team. 'Q2 Budget Review', which sounds official, but is really a Dell rep trying to sell you junk that magically pops up on your calendar _even if you mark their message as spam_. Dirty way to get by executive assistants, too.

kstrauser 6y ago
That sounds like an excellent way to make me ban all inbound traffic from that vendor.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  It's going directly from the vendor to Google. How exactly would you block that traffic?
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    You may not be able to block the calendar spam with current tools, but if you're in a decision-making role, you can block e-mails or blacklist the vendor so your purchasing department knows that they cannot order from them.
pavel_lishin 6y ago
> It's used not just by spammers, but by sales reps, too. Not sure there's a distinction there.
- superkuh 6y ago
  Spammers don't have the corporate liability protections that allow corporate employees to spam without worry. So really, spammers are better people.
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
> Dell recently did this to about half a dozen people on my team. 'Q2 Budget Review', If you put this shit on my calendar, I will never purchase a product from you. I will additionally, at my own discretion, use it as proof that you have had a data breach and are unable to keep your accounts safe since no real company would really do this on purpose.

malwarebytess 6y ago

I still get this. It was bad enough on my "sign up for shit" email address that I had to disconnect that account from my smartphone because it kept spamming me with notifications in my calendar to "earn $1500 a week working at home!"

unnouinceput 6y ago
Considering 40h/week that would be 1500/40 = $35/h. Kinda low for a freelancer to work from home. Tell spammers their game is outdated, they should at least double it :P
- wiremaus 6y ago
  That's big money for a lot of Americans, even ones using Google calendar. It's effective bait.
  - malwarebytess 6y ago
    $72,000/year. Individual median income is around $30,000.

wincy 6y ago

You just reminded me why I decoupled my google calendar from my iPhone calendar a few years ago. Just the other day I was thinking I’d like them up, but something made me feel like I shouldn’t...

Simulacra 6y ago

Google has very little incentive to fix the problem, and outsourced support personnel have even less incentive to care. The entire google forums read like passing the buck.

fpgaminer 6y ago
> Google has very little incentive to fix the problem A long time ago, in an internet far, far away, Gmail was brand new. The big feature? No spam. Back then we'd hide our email addresses in cryptic text and images. It was a private thing, shared between friends. If the light of the internet were to ever shine upon your unobfuscated email address, woe be onto you as the plague of SPAM descended. There were even entire websites dedicate to the purpose of "email address images". It was ... a wild time. Then, GMAIL! For the first time since the dawn of SPAM we could post our addresses in plaintext, in the light of day. We didn't hide them like dirty underwear. The whole WORLD could see our email addresses, and we didn't have a care in the world. The smell of fresh email was in the air, unbesmirched by SPAM. Perhaps the young ones forget. Perhaps Google has forgotten. Lost to the sands of Calendar spam...
- Simulacra 6y ago
  I remember… I was at Stanford in 2000 and the future looked so bright.
eximius 6y ago
Even internally this bug is not prioritized. In their defense, it's not clear what the behaviour should be. Against them, there are options that, while not perfect, are better than the status quo, even if the user must manually set them.
- breakingcups 6y ago
  In this case, the email is already flagged as spam in Gmail, but the calendar invite still gets added. To me it seems pretty clear what the behaviour should be. If flagged as spam, do not add to calendar.

toss1 6y ago

Another lovely Google feature that lasted for about 10sec. after I discovered it: Booked a flight, got the receipt through Gmail. Google then auto-populated my calendar with the flights - fine. They also populated it with a hotel reservation, and a link saying I hadn't yet confirmed the reservation for Hilton. I was going to stay with family, w/no intention of staying in a hotel. I couldn't believe the blatant hijacking and spamming involved here from my private info - bad enough if they'd merely spammed a hotel advert for those dates. Contacted Google, no way to turn it off without turning off the entire feature. Done. Permanently. I couldn't believe anyone could think this was a good idea.

scubbo 6y ago
YMMV, but I personally think that's a reasonable level of intrusion. I'd prefer less; but for the convenience of "auto-populated calendar events", I'm willing to swallow a little unobtrusive upselling for a very justifiable assumption ("person who is travelling _probably_ wants a hotel").
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Having Google put fake hotel reservation confirmation links in your calendar is a "reasonable level of intrusion?" It's amazing what we've become conditioned to.
  - zerocrates 6y ago
    Is this something Google actually did/does? It doesn't really fit with my experience of them. Now, if the confirmation email contained this upsell in text or in schema.org metadata or whatever and Google pulled it over, that feels very much like something they would do.
    - ojosilva 6y ago
      In my experience that's what happened. Some ad text on the bottom of the email got picked up (ie "hotels available during your trip"). It had "hotel" and a date range. That's all a faulty Google AI needs to create a hotel stay event. In fact I'd adventure to say this is an exploit by the airline upsell team, not Google.

ethagnawl 6y ago

I'd been wondering about this phenomenon for years. However, it happened infrequently and was never enough of a bother to dig into.