Recent Spam methods

[zduhac]

Hi, all. I just wanted to share this with as much people as possible. The more people get involved, the better.

As many of you have already seen, heard or (most probably) experienced at some point during the previous week, there is a lot of malicious spam going around. Basically, if you haven't received a Shared Photo Album invitation, you most probably have received an iCloud Calendar invitation. Not to mention all the "sexy time with your neighbor" and "software patch delivered" phishing mails that have been going around for quite some time.

Let me just say one thing. This is not a new problem. People have been receiving all of the above mentioned spams for many years now. It's just that there were never so many iCloud users affected before.

I've reached out to my family and friends, and from 9 people I have asked if they got any Calendar invitation in the last week or so, 7 of them actually did. 2 of them did not even know what they actually received and 4 of them simply dismissed the invitation by pressing "Decline".

This is something that cannot be ignored any longer. That's why I'm reaching out to the community. Let's do something, let's make a difference!

What needs to be done:

First of all, you need to go to iCloud and go to: Preferences > Advanced and choose Receive event invitations as: Email to [B]xxx@icloud.com[/B]. I know this did not work as expected to a lot of people and they simply started receiving the invitations to both the Calendar app and as an email (I am not one of those people), but this is a crucial step in the Apple Spam Week.

Now as soon as you receive an email with the invitation to one of those cool Ray-Ban sales (or something similar), you should forward it as an attachment to: abuse@icloud.com immediately. You can do this by going to the Mail app on your Mac and choosing Message > Forward as attachment from the menu bar. If you are not a Mac user, simply use the forward button from your mail client. At this point all we want to do is forward it, doesn't matter how we do that.

Also, check your spam folder whenever you can, and forward those spam messages as well. You know which ones. The ones with all those great nude pictures of your neighbor, or the ones that invite you to check out a girl for a "sexy time" and so on. Most of those come from the same place as these invites. Send those to the email above as well.

Third and final step: Go to Help us win this fight![/COLOR][/B]

Thanks!

 

[Just_Me_D]

Hi, all. I just wanted to share this with as much people as possible. The more people get involved, the better.

As many of you have already seen, heard or (most probably) experienced at some point during the previous week, there is a lot of malicious spam going around. Basically, if you haven't received a Shared Photo Album invitation, you most probably have received an iCloud Calendar invitation. Not to mention all the "sexy time with your neighbor" and "software patch delivered" phishing mails that have been going around for quite some time.

Let me just say one thing. This is not a new problem. People have been receiving all of the above mentioned spams for many years now. It's just that there were never so many iCloud users affected before.

I've reached out to my family and friends, and from 9 people I have asked if they got any Calendar invitation in the last week or so, 7 of them actually did. 2 of them did not even know what they actually received and 4 of them simply dismissed the invitation by pressing "Decline".

This is something that cannot be ignored any longer. That's why I'm reaching out to the community. Let's do something, let's make a difference!

What needs to be done:

First of all, you need to go to iCloud and go to: Preferences > Advanced and choose Receive event invitations as: Email to xxx@icloud.com. I know this did not work as expected to a lot of people and they simply started receiving the invitations to both the Calendar app and as an email (I am not one of those people), but this is a crucial step in the Apple Spam Week.

Now as soon as you receive an email with the invitation to one of those cool Ray-Ban sales (or something similar), you should forward it as an attachment to: abuse@icloud.com immediately. You can do this by going to the Mail app on your Mac and choosing Message > Forward as attachment from the menu bar. If you are not a Mac user, simply use the forward button from your mail client. At this point all we want to do is forward it, doesn't matter how we do that.

Also, check your spam folder whenever you can, and forward those spam messages as well. You know which ones. The ones with all those great nude pictures of your neighbor, or the ones that invite you to check out a girl for a "sexy time" and so on. Most of those come from the same place as these invites. Send those to the email above as well.

Third and final step: Go to [URL="https://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html#mn_p]Apple Feedback[/URL] and write them about this problem. Do this daily if you can! Let's let them know that this is not a simple feedback. We need (even demand) this to be resolved. Apple needs to give us an option to NOT receive invitations from people outside our contact list. At least until they figure out how to deal with this problem properly.

I know that this is a long shot, but at this point I don't see any other option (other than leaving the whole Apple ecosystem). We need to be heard!

And if you are reading this and you did not receive such an invitation or a spam email, please don't ignore this. That doesn't mean you won't receive it in the near future. I only got my first one a couple of weeks ago. Help us win this fight!

Thanks!

Maybe it's my imagination, but you're making it seem as if this is a global epidemic or something. As long as advertisers exist, there will always be SPAM, in my opinion.

 

[zduhac]

If you had a chance to check other message boards and tech websites, you would think it really was a global epidemic.
Example: How to stop the wave of Apple Calendar invite spam | Ars Technica

I've dealt with spam all my "online" life, but this is a new level.

 

[sting7k]

I never even got emails just calendar invites on my iPad. Very annoying. I don't use iCloud calendar though so when I turned it off I stopped getting them.

 

[Just_Me_D]

Thankfully, I've not yet been subjected to that form of SPAM.

 

[pkcable]

Interestingly I JUST recently helped someone with this same problem, and a member posted a work-around. HOWEVER I kind of agree we should bug Apple about getting it fixed. Perhaps not as much as you are suggesting, BUT it certainly needs to be addressed. Anyways here's the post with a link to the work-around....

http://forums.imore.com/ask-question/378770-chinese-calendar-event-invites-spam.html#post2857124

 

[Almeuit]

Sadly ... Apple won't be able to help with it. It is just impossible to block every bit of spam.

 

[Xenden]

I'm hoping that iOS 11 takes care of all of this.