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

I am very sorry that everyone out there is still suffering from the attacks of spam.

I fought Spam at the corporate level for over 20 years. It equipment, licensing, training and the right people to administer the spam prevention applications are all costly.

But, the same effort it takes to protect an office building of 500 or even 25 users is the same effort to protect their email server farms. Email can be filtered when it comes into the Microsoft (MS) email server farms. Most of the emails I receive are not from valid domains. MS is not even doing reverse lookups to ensure the sending email accounts are real.

The big question here is why? Why does MS allow its customers to be preyed upon, data stolen, financial attacks, and the whole host of scams and evil **** spammers pull. They are all bad actors. MS is profiting off of selling them your information, the same as Google, Facebook (meta), and all the other so-called "FREE" social platforms. The theft of your data has made people like Mark Zuckerman BILLIONS of dollars. If Facebook is free, where did all the cash come from?

Why don't your apps on your phone close automatically? Because while they run in the background they monitor and track you. Steal your data, pictures, videos, and more. Heck, I have seen apps for coupons that stole my wife's data allotment by the Gigs.

If Microsoft will not stop the spam problem I guarantee that they are profiting from it somehow.

As an MCSE, dual Master's Degrees, Collegiate professor, and Dean in IT Security with over 25 years of experience:

   " DO NOT TRUST MICROSOFT " They can end spam today. Ask yourself why they will not when every one of us out here would gladly pay a subscription fee if necessary to end spam. Why would they turn down money?

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?

What a tragedy........There isn't any way to report as "junk" or "spam" etc........They only option I have in Outlook 365 is "DELETE" Then when you delete the invite Microsoft actually asks you the IGNORANT question, "do yo want to notify the event organizer." WHAT???? It automatically defaults with your mouse to the "YES" tab. Good God. I don't think it gets anymore irritatingly ignorant then this. The BILLIONS of DOLLARS Microsoft makes you'd think that they'd take care of their consumers and come up with a better security plan for their product. I wish I could uninstall outlook but we use it for work as well I use it for home.

@Microsoft needs to fix this. This is a vulnerability issue with YOUR product that anyone can post a calendar item to my (our) calendar with literally NO verification from the calendar owner - ME! I delete these things constantly now and sometimes within minutes another one is posted to my calendar. This is an issue with Microsoft Outlook 365, NOT a user issue. I'm tired of paying for this only to be abused by malicious actors and indifference by Microsoft. I happen to work for a large Microsoft partner and it is mind boggling how little Microsoft seems to care about issues with your products. Why am I paying for this??? Fix the problem with your product! How do you expect me to recommend MSFT products when I, as a paying customer, can't get a resolution or even much attention to a simple issue like this?

Hi Chad, Thanks for contacting us and sorry for the inconveniences, Spam calendar invitations are a type of unwanted email that try to trick you into accepting a meeting request or clicking on a malicious link. They can clutter your calendar and expose you to phishing or malware attacks. They are not related to your virus scan or your Outlook settings, but rather to the sender's ability to bypass the spam filters. There are some steps you can take to prevent and remove spam calendar invitations in Outlook: - Do not open, accept, or decline the invitations. This will only confirm your email address to the spammers and encourage them to send more. Instead, delete them from your inbox or move them to the junk folder. - Create a rule to automatically delete or move to junk any meeting invitations from unknown or suspicious senders. You can do this in Outlook.com's settings: Settings (gear icon) > View all Outlook settings > Junk email. - Turn off the option to show event summaries from email on your calendar. You can do this in Outlook.com's settings: Settings (gear icon) > View all Outlook settings > Calendar > Events from email. From there, you can choose "Don't show event summaries in email or on my calendar" for each type of invite. - Report the spam invitations as phishing or junk to Microsoft. You can do this by selecting the invitation in your inbox and clicking on the "Report" button at the top. This will help Microsoft improve their spam filters and protect other users. I hope this helps! Regards, Sola

Hi Sola,

I did this about 2 months ago and it worked for 2 months.

Yet somehow, the spammers have found a way around it and they’re now automatically adding their events to my calendar again.

If I decline the event, it confirms my address exists, there is no option to delete the invite without declining the event and this no way to remove the spam calendar entry without reinforcing the spammer.

Again, it worked for a few months, and it’s now suddenly a problem again.

I’ve had to turn the sound notifications off for my calendar app on my iPhone because these emails are coming through at 4am and waking me up.

These actions are not relevant to MacOS as usual. This is a constant source of aggravation, outdated or outright incorrect information when it comes to MacOS. If MSFT doesn't want to support MacOS, why do they keep selling products for it? I'm done with MSFT. Nothing but problems ever since I made the stupid mistake of signing up for Office & Outlook 365. Total waste of my money. Microsoft should be able to stop this from happening but they don't even give a damn.