Items tagged with google calendar
When it comes to online life, where there is a will, spammers will find a way, unfortunately. Even more unfortunate, unwanted messages are not always contained within email. More recently, they have been spilling out into Google Calendar, and depending on bad the situation is, you may find that your calendar is filled with bogus events. Can something be done about this? Fortunately, the answer is a resounding "Yes!" Obviously, the first place to start is your email—marking junk mail as spam and implementing more aggressive controls are the first steps, because you are attacking the problem at the source. This is not always enough, though. Here's the thing—Google Calendar has a feature...
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Tuesday is canceled, no work for anyone! Well, not quite. Reports around the globe indicate that Google Calendar is down. Users are being treated with a "Not Found, Error 404" message when trying to access their jam-packed schedules. At this time, there is no indication of what is causing the error messages, or what people are doing in the meantime when their daily lives and work schedules are so dependent on Google Calendar. Is it unannounced maintenance from Google? Did Google experience some cascading hardware failure that lead to the service be knocked offline? Did Google experience a cyberattack that is affecting some systems? Actually, there could be a simpler explanation. Yesterday, we...
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Anyone with a modicum of security sense knows that if you get an email that looks suspicious, you don't click on any included links. Most people also know to watch out for phishing scams that come in via social networks -- phishing attacks are expected in these mediums. What many might not expect is to run across phishing links in their Google Calendar. Hackers have realized that they can take advantage of default calendar settings to plant their own events that are tainted with phishing links onto a user's computer. Since Google Calendar entries have notifications tied to them, the user gets notifications that seem legitimate and can lead to the user clicking through to a nefarious link and...
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Several years ago, spammers figured out they could fill up a user's Google Calendar with advertisements and other unwanted messages by sending them out as event invites. The issue has largely flown under the radar, but unfortunately for some Google Home owners, the exploit (if you want to call it that) is preventing them from receiving legitimate notifications over their smart speaker, turning what was a nuisance into a major problem. We were alerted about the issue from Micah Stroud, a former NVIDIA employee who sent us an email detailing his frustration with the situation. "For the past three months I've been living with an out of control spammer in my house: it comes from Google Home. According...
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