Secure Google Calendar

Google calendar can unwittingly be used to send you spam. Joe Cassels closes this loop hole for you.

PC security and the fight against spam are ongoing battles. Just as new ways to improve your security are developed, crackers and virus writers look for other ways to compromise your computer. Spammers are no different and as antispam technology improves, they have to look for other ways to peddle their wares.

One loophole that’s become popular for spammers to exploit is the feature in Google Calendar that enables you to invite other people to events that you’re holding. It’s intended as an easy way to let colleagues know about a coming meeting or to invite friends to a drinks party without going through the rigmarole of contacting each one individually with details of date, time and place to find out who can and can’t attend. However, the default settings on Google Calendar make this an easy exploit for spammers because all they need to have is your Google Mail address.

The calendar is set by default to add invitations to your appointments automatically when you receive them. New appointments can also be set to automatically remind all guests by email a short time before the event starts. As the email comes from your calendar, it’s very unlikely to be filtered as spam because this is a trusted address that will probably be white listed. The result is that a spammer is able to pollute both your inbox and your calendar with appointments for get rich schemes, sexual enhancement seminars and all the usual rubbish that he or she is peddling.

It’s pretty easy to fix the problem. Just log into your calendar and change the default setting that automatically adds all invitations to your appointments to one that doesn’t. You might also want to turn off the utility that displays events that you’ve declined if you have started receiving this kind of spam. The walkthrough demonstrates how to use this simple tweak to secure your account.

As the problem becomes more widespread, it’s likely that Google will change the default setting so that spammers can’t just add you to their appointments. However, until this happens, you can protect yourself by tweaking your settings.

Stopping Google Calendar Spam

Spammers can add you as a guest to calendar events. Here’s how to stop them.

1

Out of the blue, you receive an email reminder from your calendar, telling you about an appointment. When you open your calendar, there it is, advertising a product peddling the usual sleaze that spam does so well.

2

The spammer was able to add it to your calendar by finding your Google mail address and adding you to an event set up on his calendar. Your calendar automatically accepted the event and reminded you of it.

3

To prevent this kind of spam, open your Google calendar and choose Settings. On the General tab, scroll down to ‘Automatically add invitations to my calendar’. Change the default setting to No, instead of Yes and save your settings.