Thread: Spammers take over personal calendars

(Since most of us are using some form of electronic diary/calendar, this warning may be quite timely)

Running your personal schedule with the help of online or
personal computer-based calendars can help you manage your
increasingly busy life.

But, watch out! Spammers have discovered how to worm their way
into your calendar.

With PC-based programs like Microsoft Outlook and online
services such as Google or Yahoo Calendar, they exploit a
feature that allows one user to send a meeting invitation to
another.

And Mac users are not immune either -- we'll explain how Mac
users can protect themselves as well.

The trick works differently in each program. In Outlook, you
usually get a meeting invitation attached to an email. Deleting
the email is no good -- the invitation is inserted into your
calendar anyway.

That's because, by default, some versions of the program block
off time on your calendar as soon as you get a meeting request.

Declining the invitation spells trouble too. It confirms your
email address to the spamming robots and you will then be
inundated with emails from just about every spammer under the
sun -- since spammers trade email addresses between themselves.

The only course of action is to use settings inside the
programs that will ignore appointments emailed by others unless
you respond to them.

In Outlook, go to 'tools\options\calendar options'; under
'advanced options' select 'resource scheduling', and uncheck
the box that says "Automatically accept meeting requests and
process cancellations."

An event can also be added automatically to your Google
Calendar. It will appear as an entry for a particular day, with
a question mark beside it. If you click on the entry, you get
the full spam message.

This usually turns out to be a phishing message or a money
request of the 'my husband died and left a fortune' variety.

Again, your Google Calendar settings allow you to turn off the
"Automatically add invitations to my calendar" option.

Yahoo Calendar is probably the most vulnerable but also the
easiest to fix. According to some reports, spammers can post
directly to your calendar but to stop this you simply go to
settings and allow only "trusted friends" to view and add
events in your calendar.

This calendar scam also can work on Macs. To prevent it in the
iCal program, select Preferences, click on the Advanced tab at
the top, and then uncheck the "Automatically retrieve
invitations from Mail" box.

Note that all of these threats potentially affect any device
that can run or show your calendar, including PCs, Macs, phones
and PDAs.

Scambusters