A growing cybersecurity threat involves fraudsters sending calendar invitations that bypass email filters and automatically populate users’ electronic calendars with fake meetings and notifications. According to threat detection engineers and security analysts, this technique has experienced significant expansion in recent months.
The scam operates by having fraudsters send calendar requests via email to work or personal addresses. Calendar applications, including Google Calendar, can automatically add these invitations without requiring users to actively accept them, meaning the malicious entries appear even if recipients never open the original email. This automatic functionality gives the fraudulent entries a veneer of legitimacy by placing them alongside legitimate appointments like doctor visits or work meetings.
Scammers employ various tactics to make invitations appear credible, including using legitimate platforms such as Zoom to send the requests and mimicking internal company communications with logos and customized content. The fake calendar entries typically contain links or phone numbers, with common examples including false notifications about voicemail messages, payment confirmations, unusual account activity warnings, and contract bidding opportunities. When users click these links, they are directed to fraudulent login pages resembling services like Microsoft, Google, or PayPal, where they unknowingly provide credentials to criminals.
Security professionals note that calendar phishing presents particular challenges for automated defense systems. Blocking invitations from legitimate platforms like Zoom would simultaneously prevent genuine meeting requests, making comprehensive filtering impractical. Experts recommend that users treat unexpected calendar entries with the same skepticism applied to suspicious emails. Suggested protective measures include disabling automatic invitation acceptance and configuring calendar settings to only accept invitations from known contacts. Rather than declining suspicious invitations, which signals active email addresses to scammers, users are advised to delete or report such entries as spam or junk.
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