The Inevitability of Unintended Consequences (OT)

...Does anyone know how to prevent fly-by-night foreign merchandisers from placing unwanted advertisements as "invitations" on your Apple iCloud-linked personal Calendar?

Sheesh. I hope I don't end up having to disable my Calendar, but I will if this can't be stopped. Unacceptable.

Mike

P.S. Speaking of computers, my maiden voyage of using the laptop as a main computer was concluded when I got back from my Thanksgiving trip. Seemed to work fine. It was easy to detach it, carry it along, and then reconnect it. Not as easy as if it had one USB-C connector running to an OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock, but not much more difficult either. Meanwhile, my main backup is my 3TB Time Capsule, which I put in a safe when I travel. My main problem now is that my laptop, which I bought to be small and portable, is not quite powerful enough to be my main computer. It does most things fine, but is slow with Photoshop.

Do you think thieves will believe the sign I put on the safe that says "Nothing in here but papers and hard drives"? In fact, there is nothing in the safe but papers and hard drives. But then, thieves might be the last people to believe that anyone else is honest. Reminds me of the fable from '80s New York City about the guy who put a sign on his windshield saying "NO RADIO" and came back to find his driver's side window broken and a note on the seat that said "Just checking."

Mike

UPDATE: Three good solutions to Calendar spam:

Ars Technica
New York Times
MacSparky

Thanks to Richard Ripley, Don Craig, Jeff Buttel, and other readers who suggested these resources and others.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kent: "Yup. Received a Black Friday Ray-Ban offer on my calendar here too. The methods mentioned above are about all you can do at this point. Apple: get on it please! I have a very strong, visceral negative reaction to spam that is probably not doing my nervous system any good. The idea that some a**hole is using devious means to hijack my personal computer/communication system, which I most certainly did not purchase for their benefit, for nefarious scam-marketing purposes makes my blood boil. I am not a violent person, but spam unfailingly conjures up a fantasy about shoving computer equipment where the sun don't shine, sideways, without lubrication. Absolute scum.

"Just wanted to get that off my chest. Post or not, at your discretion. I feel better already...."

Mike replies: That made me feel better too. 

Comments

[Richard Ripley]

Hi Mike:

Check out this page with information about how to block calendar spam:

https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2016/11/how-to-fight-calendar-spam

Best - Richard

[Don Craig]

Best calendar spam fix summary I have found is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/technology/personaltech/fighting-ios-calendar-spam.html

It tells you how to get rid of the spam without communicating with the sender (move the "appointments" to a disposable calendar), and how to route all such appointments through your email in future rather than automatically accepting them.

Apple still has work to do here.

cheers,
Don Craig

[Ned Bunnell]

Mike, to prevent spam iCloud calendar invites, follow the instructions here...

https://astralbodi.es/2016/11/25/preventing-spam-icloud-calendar-invites/

Best,
Ned

[J Mellody]

https://astralbodi.es/2016/11/25/preventing-spam-icloud-calendar-invites/?utm_source=loopinsight.com%2Frss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+loopinsight%2FKqJb+(The+Loop)&utm_content=FeedBurner

Preventing iCal invites

[Ian Gibson]

Try this;

https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2016/11/how-to-fight-calendar-spam

[Bruce McL]

I just read an article about this on one of the Mac tech websites. That article referred me to this page:

https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2016/11/how-to-fight-calendar-spam

It does a good job of describing the problem and giving solutions.

[Jim]

Re: invitations on Calendar. Google "unwanted invitations in IPad calendar (which I use) to get a solution at Macworld.

[Guy Claessens]

http://osxdaily.com/2016/11/26/icloud-calendar-spam-invite-stop/

Kind regards
Guy

[richardplondon]

"the safe in the basement that came with the house" - it's a good thing the previous owners didn't take that basement away with them, or you'd have had nowhere to keep your safe.. (ducks, and runs)

[Richard Tugwell]

I'm curious that you find any modern machine slow with Photoshop. What sort of things are you trying to do? I never took you as a guy to use the sort of Photoshop techniques that are really machine intensive?

FWIW, as I posted years ago here, I found editing 300mb TIFFs in Lightroom on a 4GB entry level Macbook Air to be no problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBs63R2JrJc

[Keith]

I share the same concern about theft of computer and hard drives. It's one of the main reasons I prefer a laptop. I have a unique but easily accessible storage area for the laptop when not in use, along with a security system and video monitoring. Earlier this year a coworker had his large safe stolen by 4 men with a heavy duty hand truck and a pickup. In and out of the house in 30 minutes in broad daylight. Is your safe bolted down securely?

[Stephen Cowdery]

Re: Calendar spam:

https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2016/11/how-to-fight-calendar-spam

Evidently a new thing, hopefully Apple will fix this soon, the article has some strategies.

[Bill Tyler]

You might want to consider cloud backup as a supplement to your Time Machine. I haven't surveyed all the vendors, but I'm using CrashPlan. It's worked well for me. The initial backup took weeks, but now the data just goes there with no thought on my part, and its integrity is being cared for by professionals who take the loss of even one byte as a personal affront.

[Dave400]

http://gizmodo.com/how-to-stop-icloud-calendar-spam-1789430890

[John Krumm]

I just "fixed" it today. I had to go to icloud.com, log in, then go to calendar, click on the little gear icon in the lower left, then choose "advanced," and then choose to have invitations sent through email instead of going straight to the calendar (it's down at the bottom of the preferences). I imagine this is temporary until Apple figures something out.

[Richard Parkin]

Is it really a good idea to advertise your safe in the basement? I hope that it is really somewhere else ;-)

[David Zivic]

I'm assuming that your safe is well built and that considering the income level of your neighborhood, would not warrant hiring a safe cracker or titanium drill boats or cutting torches to break it open. I will assume the size would make it comfortable for one person to remove and take it to a shop of sort that people like this go. These safes often have a feature to put bolts through it through the bottom. Put the bolts with no visible carriage bolt heads so no wrench can work. smear a compatable to steel or concrete sdhesive called a 3M product "5200", etc. Plus that if your contents do need access regularily then disguise the location with a false bottom or back of a closet or hidden secret place.

[Jon Schick]

Reminds me of the story of some guy who had all his LPs stolen. Except one. "Crime of the Century" by Supertramp.

[Gordon Cahill]

Another nail in the Apple coffin for me. I like my Mac Pro but I've just disabled all Apple calendars and transferred all my data to a google calendar. Still doesn't stop the iMessage spam (iPad and Mac) even though I don't use an iPhone or random Facetime calls, which I can't seem to completely turn off.

Add the issue of having to "unlock" my account at least once a week because Apple goes into security meltdown when someone else accidentally logs into my account with a wrong password and I've just about had enough of the fruity company.

Gordon

[Eolake]

I'm also curious about the laptop. Which model is it, if I may?

[MacBook Air6,2
2 cores, 1.7 GHz, 512GB SSD. Driving the NEC PA272w. --Mike]

[Eolake]

I dislike advertising. It pollutes everything.
(And I think that there's a wide grey area between advertising and spam. Advertising is just spam with the local landlord getting a cut.)

I think it says something, and not something good, about the mind of man that it is a better business model to have other vendors yell out their products in your space than to simply have people pay for your product. It's strange.

[Stephen Scharf]

i'm also getting a bit worried about how slow Photoshop seems to be these days. I use a 4 GHz Quad-Core i7 iMac with 16 GB RAM (which is considerably faster than the 2.5-2.8 GHz Macbook Pros), and recently installed Photoshop CC 2017. I've noticed a significant reduction in speed compared to the previous 2015.5 (?) version and PS is now rather insistently telling me that I need to upgrade to "El Crapitan" for best performance. I really would like to stay with Yosemite as an OS as I not a fan of El Crapitan by any means. Urg.

[Jeffrey K Hartge]

Can the safe be closed without locking? If so, just leave it unlocked. I'm guessing your primarily interested in using the safe for fire protection. Leave a note on the safe saying it is unlocked and contains nothing of value.

[Chris]

I've got local backup disks for my systems, but worries about ransomware encrypting attached drives, and/or thieves and fires, has me using a cloud backup provider. Crashplan is particularly nice if you have a friend in a similar predicament, as you can each backup to the other for free.

[Chuck Albertson]

Your question assumes that the neighborhood junkies are literate.

[Pak Ming Wan]

On the hard drives stuff full of photo RAW masters front, I made the move to Amazon Glacier a couple of years ago and I haven't regretted it. For a couple of bucks a month my valuable non-volatile data is held in their cold storage.

https://aws.amazon.com/fr/glacier/

Pak

[Bernard]

I won't weigh in on the calendar issue, but regarding the speed of the laptop for Photoshop usage:

A colleague of mine saw large improvements when he added a fast but not-too-big (so affordable) USB 3.0 SSD drive to the machine, used solely as a scratch disk for Adobe. With a newer machine, Thunderbolt migh be even better than USB 3.0 (but probably more expensive).

[Domimic]

You could go further with your safe as others have suggested, but first ensure you have offsite and cloud backups in place - all encrypted. Then if you're unfortunate enough to be visted by the pickup guys the worst you're looking at is the inconvenience and insurance excess. Your data is always more valuable than the hardware.

[Mike Anderson]

"Nothing in here but papers and hard drives" can only mean one thing to a modern thief: a fortune in bitcoin. Or maybe homemade porn.

[Daniel]

Easy way to deal with 'calendar spam' is to buy a real calendar printed on paper and write in your appointments.
Works with ink or pencil. Works when batteries die. If you lose it you are in the same boat as when you lose the electronic kind.

[hugh crawford]

RE: "NO RADIO" signs
I used to assist a photographer in NYC who bought a new car and the first thing he did was cover one of the windows with packing tape so that it looked like it had already been broken into.

that was in the 70s. Now i find that just parking my car unlocked on the street in Brooklyn keeps thieves from bothering it. The only downside is people who know me and recognize the car phone me to tell me that my car is unlocked.

On the other hand in these days in San Francisco if you do that you are likely to find someone sleeping in your car when you come back. In the 80s I knew a guy in LA that would pay a homeless guy to sleep in the backseat of his convertible that he parked on the street in front of his loft. Cheaper and more secure than the parking lot.

[Jeff]

Even better if the thief taped the owner's 'no radio' sign over the hole in the dash after having stolen the radio.

[Steve Rosenblum]

Regarding your MBA--is it i5 or i7 processor and how much RAM? Is PS slow when you are using the MBA without the monitor or the same? I have the i7 processor version of the same computer with 8 GB of RAM and haven't noted any speed difficulties with PS CC 2017, but I'm not driving a big monitor with it. However, I have a last generation Mac Mini driving my NEC PA242w without difficulty. Is your PS version up to date?

[Terry Letton]

Re: No Radio. At the time you are speaking of I worked quite often in Boston. I remember thinking about getting an old car radio out of a junk car and putting a cardboard sign on it. No BMW and depositing it in an open parking space. Never actually did it though.

[anAppleaDay]

There seem to be more and more tools to fight Apple's aggressive proprietary universe. Easy solution: buy something else.

[Easy solution?!? Not remotely. I have five separate devices and thousands of dollars invested, and many applications that work the way I want them to. I'm going to throw all that away because of one little glitch in one app? --Mike]

[John Willard]

My photo computer is hooked up to the internet for updates and Photoshop. I surf and email on a separate laptop. My backups are in a safe deposit box at the bank. Bonus...the bank is only two miles away, so I get in a good four mile walk to visit the box, day 1 to pick it up, day 2 to return it, about once a month. And no, that is not my only exercise for the month :)

[Tom Passin]

Mike: Reminds me of the fable from '80s New York City about the guy who put a sign on his windshield saying "NO RADIO" and came back to find his driver's side window broken and a note on the seat that said "Just checking."

I learned this one with the punch line "GET ONE". It still tickles me.