If you have started receiving spam iCal calendar invitations on your iPad or iPhone or Mac, you’re not alone. This is because of some change that Apple has made allowing spammers to send you ‘in-app’ iCal invitations for calendar events. Here’s how to turn that off.

Basically, this is happening because Calendar is an ‘app’, and Apple has made it so that you can now receive invitations that people send you directly in the app. So you need to turn off that option.

First, you need to sign in to iCloud (yes, even if you think that you are not using it).

Click on the Calendar icon

This will take you to your calendar. Click on the settings icon (the gear) in the lower left-hand corner.

Select Preferences

Select Advanced

In the Advanced settings area, go to the bottom, where you will see the option to either have invitations appear in the app, or instead sent to your email (you know, the old-fashioned way).

Change this option by clicking the radio button that says “Email to (your email address)” and saving it.

Now, this is not going to stop spammers from sending an invitation to your calendar, but it will stop those annoying pop-up invitations within your iCal calendar on your iPad or iPhone or Mac. Instead, the invitations will now go to your email, where you can create a filter for them or otherwise ignore them.