Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
For some time now, Google Calendar users have been vulnerable to a rather nasty type of spam that seems to have gained momentum lately. It works like this: an email containing an invitation to an event is sent by a spammer to your Google Calendar (this can apparently happen even with an email that ends up in your spam folder), and the calendar automatically puts the appointment into your calendar — even though the body of the appointment contains a spam link or some other obnoxious content.
At minimum, this is annoying. First, you have to go through the trouble of turning down the invite, which often will expose you to objectionable content. And then you will have the crossed-out appointment — which can appear as a daily appointment —…