“Apple on Sunday instituted a new junk content reporting feature on its iCloud.com web portal, the first step in what appears to be an activation of countermeasures against iCloud Calendar spam invites users began to receive in volume last month,” AppleInsider reports.
“iCloud users are now able to report Calendar invites from unknown senders as ‘junk’ by clicking on a hyperlink in the iCloud.com web interface,” AppleInsider reports. ” The provision to mark an invitation as spam, which appears inline with accept, decline and “maybe” options, is currently limited to iCloud.com, though a similar feature could make its way to dedicated iOS and macOS Calendar apps in the near future.”
AppleInsider reports, “With junk reporting now in play, Apple is presumably creating a database of nefarious users who will be monitored and, if necessary, blocked from sending mass spam invites to other customers.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not a moment too soon!
SEE ALSO:
Apple working to fight iCloud Calendar spam – December 1, 2016
How to kill Apple Calendar invite spam – November 28, 2016
Way late is more like it.
Apple needs to be more proactive regarding security instead of reactive. Chastity Belts are worthless after virginity is lost.
I’ve stopped getting any calendar spam without doing anything (except ignoring the invite). My guess is that Apple have filtered this at source or the spammers gave up because it did not result in much success.
Most people use email so spam will always be effective. How many average people use calendar apps on their computer or phone on a regular basis?
I use Calendar all the time. I’d be utterly lost without it.
Apart from my work commitments, it automatically reminds me of family birthdays, scheduled maintenance tasks, warns me of bills being paid and allows friends and relatives to share calendars with events that are relevant for our family and theirs.
I also like the way it syncs seamlessly across all devices, that events mentioned in e-mails can be instantly added and how past events can be retained so that I can search and find when I last met a particular client, or when some specific event happened.
I first started using computers at home in the very early 1980s and one of the first things I wanted was a replacement for my pocket diary. Despite trying various early personal organisers, it wasn’t until the Ericsson T68 cellphone and my Mac that I had a truly practical solution. Once I got my first iPhone, the calendar really started proving it’s worth.
Apple needs to jack up the spam for email in general as well. I pay for iCloud and understand an occasional bogus mail getting through, but to count on users forwarding as attachment to spam@me.com (even the domain is old) is ridiculous.
Sadly, spam rats use every means available to foist their crap before victim’s eyes. Social engineering malware rats use exactly the same methods to foist their infectious crap as well.
The methods used become more complex every year. There aren’t any spam filters that can detect any and all spam. Instead, the providers of spam filters (including Apple) depend upon the reporting of spam to either their systems or other spam reporting systems, in order to identify spam sources and spam associated words or code within spam email.
When I’ve heard spam rats discuss spam, they’ve consistently railed against SpamCop.net as their worst nightmare. I’ve been a paid contributing member of SpamCop.net since 1998, the year they went online. I report every spam I receive to them. In turn, they:
(A) Report spam rat attacks to the source ISPs in order to have the offending accounts killed off from the Internet. Many ISPs are very grateful. I have example thank you notes from them. Many ISPs refuse such reports because they are corrupt and/or don’t give a rat’s.
(B) Provide to the public a blacklist of spammers that can be incorporated into anti-spam measures, such as SpamSieve, Spamfire, SpamSweet… as well as the filters used by Apple and Microsoft.
I also, whenever possible, report phishing attack email directly to the company being faked in the email. Apple has a phishing reporting email address:
reportphishing@apple.com
Google, it should be noted, does NOT. Twitter does NOT. I’ve written both of them and they don’t care. They refer victims of phishing to government organizations, such as:
phishing-report@us-cert.gov
The government option is, IMHO, a waste of time. There are also non-government organizations that are concerned with phishing as well, such as:
http://antiphishing.org/report-phishing/
Hurray! Thank you Apple!
Now what about Photo Sharing invitation spam?
So you have to go to icloud.com to do this? Cannot do it in the calendar app? That is LAME.