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Your calendar should work for you - not for scammers. Learn how to spot, report, and block unwanted calendar invites while keeping your schedule safe and clutter-free.
Understanding Your Settings
By default, Google Calendar automatically adds invitations “Only if the sender is known”, which includes people in your contacts, within UC Berkeley, and those you’ve already interacted with. This default helps reduce phishing attempts.
If an event isn’t added to your calendar, you will get an invitation email. After you mark a sender as known or you interact with them, future invitations from that sender are automatically added to your calendar.
Note: Within an individual calendar’s settings, you may notice that this default invitation setting affects notifications for new events as well, which are uneditable and default set to “Automatic”.
Responding to a Scam Invite
If you receive a suspicious calendar event (e.g. Bitcoin scams, fake invoices, strange Zoom links):
- ⚠️ Do not click any links in the event description.
- Learn how to spot: Bogus bCal Meetings - Spam / Malware | Information Security Office
- Report the event: To report an event as spam, it must be sent from Google Calendar. Calendar events created by another provider, app, or service can’t be reported as spam.
Reporting Events in Google Calendar
1. Open the event in the Google Calendar.
2. Click the three vertical dots (More actions) in the top-right corner of the event detail block.
3. Select Report as spam.
4. You will be prompted to confirm and (optionally) block future invitations from that sender.
This both removes the event and helps Google improve its detection of malicious invites. When you report an event, the event is removed from your calendar. If the event recurs, all events in the series are removed.
Additional Resources
Read more from Google Support: