People have found a new way to send spam messages to iPhones and iPads. The iCloud functions of Apple’s Photos and Calendar app are abused for this. Follow these steps to prevent iCloud spam now or in the future.
This is how you prevent iCloud spam
With this new form of iCloud spam, users receive an invitation to view or share a calendar or photo album. The big problem with this is that even by rejecting these notifications, you are giving spammers the information that your iPhone is being actively used, which encourages them to send more spam.
This makes the spam extra frustrating, as your first response is likely to decline these notifications in the hope that you will get rid of them. For example, by processing the name of a website in the notification, you receive unsolicited spam on your device. The only way to stop this with the Photos app for now is to turn off these notifications completely for the time being. However, this will delete all photos that you have deleted with iCloud photo sharing. You do this as follows.
- Open the Settings app
- Choose ‘Photos and Camera’
- Turn off the switch behind ‘iCloud Photo Sharing’
The Calendar spam can be circumvented with a slightly more extensive step-by-step plan, without losing functions here. By following the steps below you will delete the report but do not report the spammers. This should ensure that they do not approach you again in the future.
- Open the Calendar app and tap Calendars
- Tap Edit and Add Calendar
- Name the Calendar and tap Done
- Now open the Spam notification and choose ‘Calendar’
- Choose the Calendar you just created
By putting all spam reports in this manually created calendar, you can then delete them at once by deleting this folder. For example, the notifications are deleted but the spammer does not receive a notification.