Why am I suddenly receiving spam calendar invitations/appointments in Outlook (Microsoft 365 Family).

I just uninstalled Microsoft Calendar. Problem solved. But I don't understand how things were showing up on my calendar and popping up notifications if I didn't open any emails with such events/attachments.

I use Thunderbird as my email client. Could Microsoft be scanning my messages for calendar events?

Exactly, they are coming straight to Calendar as an "Invitation" to a meeting. They are spam, and are most certainly malware/phishing attempts. Unfortunately, there isn't typically a mechanism to just delete it without "declining" the invitation. They have started happening every day on the account that I already get tons of spam on because it was compromised and now appears on the dark web.

As I mentioned earlier, I "solved" my problem by uninstalling the calendar app. But I'm still curious about the mechanism by which someone could gain access to my calendar and push an event onto it and causing a notification.

With Google Calendar, I can choose to subscribe to external calendars. I've never gotten an unexpected event nor invite from it.

Previous questions from 2021 provided responses that "Microsoft is aware of the problem and is working on it". Clearly, they aren't trying very hard. What is also clear is that Microsoft's spam filtering is woefully inadequate.

Does anyone bother to go after the generators of spam? For example, literally EVERYTHING that comes from imgur.com is spam. They are a literal spam factory. Why isn't the FCC or FTC jailing these scammers?

Hi,

You're welcome. Yes, my instructions apply to Outlook 365 as well. The Junk Mail Settings are different from the Events from Email Settings. To access the Events from Email Settings, you need to log into your Outlook Web App (OWA) and follow these steps:

• Click the gear icon and then select Calendar.
• Click on Events from email, then uncheck the option to show event summaries from email on your calendar.
• Save.

This will stop Outlook from automatically creating calendar events and reminders based on your emails. You can also choose to only show event summaries in email, but not on your calendar, by selecting that option instead.