Ads in the Samsung Calendar?!

[Mr. Orange 645]

I just had a calendar notification pop up that said "iPhoneX is Here!"

I clicked on it and it opened my calendar and sure enough there's this entry that I never made, and it repeats daily for the next 5 days.

I'm guessing this is a third party app and not Samsung. But I've checked permissions and none of my 3rd party apps have calendar permissions.

The only thing different that I installed from my previous phone is Blurams app for a security camera we purchased and Network Signal Info app.

Anyone know of anyway to figure out which app is pushing notifications to my calendar?

 

[umaro]

Gmail sometimes automatically adds things to your calendar from emails that you receive if they include a meeting invitation attachment. Check for a matching email in your gmail inbox/trash/spam

 

[Mr. Orange 645]

Gmail sometimes automatically adds things to your calendar from emails that you receive if they include a meeting invitation attachment. Check for a matching email in your gmail inbox/trash/spam

Good call, but nothing there. Just checked spam and trash.

 

[edstreiff]

I just got the exact same message and was wondering that too. I used to have a problem with my iCloud calendar on my iPhone x where people could just put random events on my iCloud calendar and they would appear and now it seems they can do the same thing with a Samsung calendar

 

[torickray]

I just had a calendar notification pop up that said "iPhoneX is Here!"

I clicked on it and it opened my calendar and sure enough there's this entry that I never made, and it repeats daily for the next 5 days.

I'm guessing this is a third party app and not Samsung. But I've checked permissions and none of my 3rd party apps have calendar permissions.

The only thing different that I installed from my previous phone is Blurams app for a security camera we purchased and Network Signal Info app.

Anyone know of anyway to figure out which app is pushing notifications to my calendar?

Which calendar this message from? My calendar or google calendar?

 

[fatboypup]

I've been getting them too

 

[Mr. Orange 645]

Which calendar this message from? My calendar or google calendar?

The stock Samsung Calendar app.

 

[pete4k]

I would flip if I had iphone advertising on my Samsung phone, seriously, but I don't see any advertising on mine, maybe because I went over all the menus and disabled all advertising, tracking etc. . Those are usually in privacy settings, or similar. If that doesn't work try to guess which programs could be doing this and limit all the permissions for them. Also you could create some throw away gmail account to register the phone, that nobody knows and you rarely get any emails.

 

[DeeXii]

That's not advertising from the app. Common sense would tell you that Samsung would not advertise for an iPhone.
There is a way that people can add events to your calendar without your permission simply by knowing your email address.
It is indeed coming from your Google account.
To prevent this you need to turn off the ability to accept events without confirmation or permission.
Here is a good resource.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20829615/google-calendar-spam-events-sharing-email-how-to-stop

 

[torickray]

The stock Samsung Calendar app.

Yes. But what calendar it link too? Did you connect to google calendar and the message is come from google calendar?

 

[Voicebox]

This sounds like a spam calendar event. I just had the same issue, but mine were all in Russian. If it is, where it comes from is if someone adds your email as an invitee, it will add to your calendar even without getting the email or replying. The setting that allows this has to be fixed on a PC web version of Google calendar.

Here is how to do that, but it doesn't deal with the events already there I think.
https://howtoremove.guide/remove-spam-in-google-calendar/

To mark an event as spam, I can not recall the exact steps, but it was something like in Google calendar on the phone, open the event without clicking any links. Hit the 3 vertical dots in the upper right. One of the options should be "mark as spam" or something like that. Or there might be "more actions" then the mark as spam option.

I can not find the original website where I learned that. But it fixed my problem since it blocked the spammer. There does not appear to be the same functionality in Samsung calendar, so try doing on the website version from a computer.

 

[Mr. Orange 645]

Which calendar this message from? My calendar or google calendar?

Yes. But what calendar it link too? Did you connect to google calendar and the message is come from google calendar?

Gotcha, sorry. Yes, it shows it came from my Gmail address (Google Calendar), but it's greyed out. And. You can't edit the entry, either. Just delete it.

 

[Mr. Orange 645]

That's not advertising from the app. Common sense would tell you that Samsung would not advertise for an iPhone.
There is a way that people can add events to your calendar without your permission simply by knowing your email address.
It is indeed coming from your Google account.
To prevent this you need to turn off the ability to accept events without confirmation or permission.
Here is a good resource.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20829615/google-calendar-spam-events-sharing-email-how-to-stop

Common sense would tell you that I already stated I didn't believe it was coming from Samsung. Instated that in the very first post.

Thank you for the link, I'll turn that setting off.

My concern now is it isn't just me, it's others here. Somewhere along the line, someone has got a hold of our email addresses.

 

[DeeXii]

Common sense would tell you that I already stated I didn't believe it was coming from Samsung. Instated that in the very first post.

Thank you for the link, I'll turn that setting off.

My concern now is it isn't just me, it's others here. Somewhere along the line, someone has got a hold of our email addresses.

Sorry if that came off rude I did not intend for it too. It just seemed like the discussion was going on a route that made it seem like it was the Samsung app rather than a Google calendar issue.
Well, truth be told I got one of these two days ago. The same exact one.
There are tons of breaches that have been happening in recent years. You can use https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to see if your email address was included in a breach. (This does not contain all recent breaches but it has a lot)
I also have noticed a crazy uptick in back to back to back robot scam calls. The other day (same day I got the calendar spam) I was at work and a client of mine and a customer of his all had our phones ring at the same exact time. They were all "Scam likely". While they were different incoming phone numbers it was literally at the same exact time. Things seem to have really kicked up a notch when it comes to spam. At least it seems so.

 

[Mr. Orange 645]

Sorry if that came off rude I did not intend for it too. It just seemed like the discussion was going on a route that made it seem like it was the Samsung app rather than a Google calendar issue.
Well, truth be told I got one of these two days ago. The same exact one.
There are tons of breaches that have been happening in recent years. You can use https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to see if your email address was included in a breach. (This does not contain all recent breaches but it has a lot)
I also have noticed a crazy uptick in back to back to back robot scam calls. The other day (same day I got the calendar spam) I was at work and a client of mine and a customer of his all had our phones ring at the same exact time. They were all "Scam likely". While they were different incoming phone numbers it was literally at the same exact time. Things seem to have really kicked up a notch when it comes to spam. At least it seems so.

Yeah I actually checked that site about a week or two ago. Was taking some training on internet sources in criminal investigations, and they showed us that site. My email address has been compromised like 14 times, LOL.

And YES to the robocalls!! I usually just hang up on them without answering. But the other day, as soon as I hit decline, it rang again. I mean IMMEDIATELY. Did it three or four times. That's a new tactic.

It seems like every time they say the cell carriers are cracking down on robocalls, they just increase. I can't even answer my ****ing phone anymore.

 

[kolyan]

Thanks for the link to this thread. Yes I saw this in Samsung calendar this morning too. I have never seen anything like this in Google calendar and I don't have any spam emails that would trigger this.

 

[marctronixx]

Ive never seen this on any note phone I've had and dont see it now. Currently using just the stock Sammy calendar.

Ive had a few emails breached over time and that link above that tells you if your email addy has been comprised is a good resource. That said, even with a couple of my email addys breached ive still not seen this...

 

[cliffr39]

Just had the same thing. Never saw any spam emails with calendar invites, though. There were 4 events per day over 8 days.

 

[ninjeratu]

It's a know issue with Gmail. Or "working as intended", really..

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20829615/google-calendar-spam-events-sharing-email-how-to-stop

 

[Mr. Orange 645]

It's so weird that it suddenly hit us Note10/+ users. Maybe a coincidence, but still strange. And yup, sounds like a spam email event. Spammers/scammers are useless wastes of air. ?