If you see unwanted events and invitations, you might have accidentally subscribed to a spam calendar. Thankfully, the remedy is very straightforward (but it depends on which version of iOS is installed on your phone).
3. At the bottom of the page, tap Unsubscribe. Confirm you want to do this by tapping Unsubscribe again. All the unwanted events associated with that subscription should disappear from your calendar.
You can unsubscribe to a calendar by tapping any event within that calendar.
Dave Johnson
If you have an older version of iOS, do this instead:
1. Start the Calendar app.
2. At the bottom of the page, tap Calendars.
You can get to all the calendars your app is using from the link at the bottom of the page.
Dave Johnson
3. In the list of calendars, look for an entry you don’t want or don’t recognize. When you find it, tap the i to the right of the calendar’s name.
Tap the i to the right of a calendar you want to get rid of.
Dave Johnson
4. At the bottom of the calendar’s page, tap either Unsubscribe or Delete.
If this doesn’t work, you have one other remedy:
1. Start the Settings app.
2. Tap Calendars.
3. Tap Accounts.
4. Tap Subscribed Calendars.
5. Look for a calendar you don’t want or don’t recognize and then tap it, followed by Delete Account.
Unwanted text messages, while generally not as annoying as telemarketing calls, can be very irritating.
Not only do spam texts clutter your text inbox and distract you with nonsense notifications, but if you don’t have unlimited texting with your cellular plan, you might be paying for junk. And some spam messages contain links to potentially dangerous malware.
It pays to try to stop – or at least minimize – spam texts when possible.
How to stop spam texts from reaching your smartphone
Here are five steps you can take to filter or block spam texts.
1. Don’t respond to unwanted texts
You’re probably familiar with the way legitimate sources let you opt out of future text communication by replying “STOP.” Many spammers offer you the option to respond with STOP – but don’t do it.
Don’t text “STOP” unless you know the sender is trustworthy and legitimate.
Dave Johnson/Insider
Spammers use your reply – any reply, including STOP – as a signal that you received your message and are actively engaged in your messages, which can embolden them to send you more messages. Your information can also be sold to other spammers who are looking for “verified active” phone numbers.
2. Report spammers to your cellular provider
One way to counter spam texts is by reporting unwanted texters directly to your phone service provider. For most major carriers – including AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon – you can copy the offending message and text it to 7726.
You should receive a reply, which, depending on the carrier, might include a request to send the phone number that the spam came from. This probably won’t result in instant results for you, but it will contribute to cleaning up the texting ecosystem for everyone.
You can report potential spam to your phone carrier.
Dave Johnson/Insider
3. Filter potential spammers
Most phones have a setting to automatically filter potential spam texts so they don’t appear in the same list with important, legitimate texts from known contacts.
On an iPhone, open the Settings app and tap “Messages.” Scroll down and turn on “Filter Unknown Senders” by swiping the button to the right.
On Android, open the Messaging app and tap the three dots at the top right. In the drop-down menu, choose “Settings,” and then tap “Spam Protection.” Finally, turn on “Enable spam protection” by swiping the button to the right.
You can filter potential spammers on both iOS and Android.
Dave Johnson/Insider
4. Block specific spammers
If you get frequent spam from the same phone number, you can use your messaging app to block that number. Don’t count on this helping in every situation, though, because most spammers can appear to use a different number each time they reach out to you, so blocking individual numbers may have little effect.
On an iPhone, open the spam text and tap the user icon at the top of the page, then tap “info.” On the next page tap “info” again, and then tap “Block this Caller.”
You can block specific phone numbers, which is handy if you repeatedly get texts from the same sender.
Dave Johnson/Insider
On Android, the process may vary depending on the messaging app you’re using, but in general, you can tap the three dots at the top of the message and choose “Block number” from the drop-down menu.
5. Use a paid text-blocking app
Hopefully, some combination of the previous tips dramatically reduces the number of spam messages you receive. If you need additional assistance, though, you can turn to an app designed to block spam.
An app like RoboKiller, available for both iPhone and Android, can dramatically reduce the spam you receive, both in the form of phone calls and text messages. These apps aren’t free, though. RoboKiller has a 7-day free trial, and then costs either $5 per month or $40 per year.
The Spam folder can be a useful tool, and on Gmail, those unwanted messages automatically delete after 30 days. But sometimes important messages go there by accident, so it’s a good idea to periodically check the folder and stop those emails from going to your Spam folder.
Here’s how to find and use your Gmail Spam folder on desktop or mobile:.
How to find your Gmail Spam folder on desktop
1. Open Gmail in any internet browser on your Mac or PC.
2. In the left sidebar, you’ll see all your folders, including your general Inbox. Scroll down, if needed, and select More.
Select “More” to find additional folders in your Gmail account.
Devon Delfino
3. Click on the Spam folder. This will be labeled with an exclamation point icon set inside an octagon.
Click “Spam” in the left sidebar to open your spam folder in Gmail.
Devon Delfino
4. Any messages currently marked as spam will appear in this folder. These will automatically delete after 30 days.
Any messages in the Spam folder will show up here.
Devon Delfino
How to find your Gmail Spam folder on the mobile app
They’re designed to strike the part of your brain that feels an instant obligation to fix something, and fix it now.
Your package has been lost. We noticed an error on your unemployment application. This message is from the CBE Group, a debt collector, please contact us. You have a package that is over a week old that will be returned to our warehouse. AT&T billed you incorrectly. Hi there, this is Jason from Walmart, you have an item addressed to you, can you please collect it by today?
Those messages aren’t really from the companies they purport to be. Manipulative, believable, and increasingly popular, criminals who want to bilk consumers out of money are orchestrating sophisticated phishing and scamming attacks using text messages.
For years, texts have become an increasingly integral part of commerce in America. Scammers, many of whom are ripping straight from the successful scam robocall playbook, are invading messaging apps with clever and deceptive messages designed to separate targets from their money or information, and the profits are ridiculous.
Essentially, the scammers have designed a computer that turns cents into dollars, and they’re only just getting started.
Because of the nature of the scams, it’s nearly impossible for the regulators or the carriers to stop them. Even when they do manage to slap them with a fine, the scammers just don’t pay it. But there are things consumers can do to stop them, and to protect vulnerable family members.
Scam texts 101
Aaron Foss, the founder of anti-spam app Nomorobo, offered Insider a look into the volume of scams coming into American phones.
Over the course of a week, Nomorobo observed 666,704 text messages come on to users’ phones from numbers that were not in their address book. About one in 10 – 9.98%, specifically – were flagged as malicious, attempts to scam the users, and were blocked by the service prior to hitting inboxes.
Foss and his company are constantly evaluating the flows of automated text messages across the system, identifying bad actors and shutting down their access in real time. It’s a never-ending fight, and the scammers are increasingly clever.
“We’re seeing that 10% of all unknown text messages, if they’re not in your contacts, are spam, scam, or phishing,” Foss said. “The vast majority do things like impersonate US Postal Service, Amazon, Costco. They usually have a link in there. They’ll say something like, ‘Congratulations, you’ve won some raffle,’ or ‘Thanks to COVID, Netflix is giving you a free account,’ or something like that.”
Your basic scammer is targeting someone who can be easily confused, who who isn’t attuned to the business practices of these companies. When they click the link, they’re sent to a “rewards” site, perhaps with the appearance of a game or a spinning wheel, and are told they won something.
In reality, after inputting their information, they’re signed up for a recurring app purchase.
The math is extremely simple for the scammers. If they spend a few dollars on the domain, send out hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of texts for a fraction of a penny apiece, even if just 0.1% click on it, and even if just five people get fooled, they’re up several hundred dollars.
“Once you have a system like that? You put $1 in one side, and it spits out $500 on the other side. You’re just gonna do every single thing that you can to find ways to do more and more,” Foss said. “Fine, I’ll work with six shady text messaging companies; fine, I’ll buy 1,000 domain names. It doesn’t matter at all, I’m not going to get caught. You’re not gonna catch me in this.”
But other, more sophisticated attacks can confuse and steal from people who aren’t so easily fooled.
CSA Images/Getty; Suriyapong Koktong /EyeEm; Taylor Tyson/ Insider
Gone phishing
The goal of a phisher is to get personal information that can be used to steal. The modus operandi is to spam out a message that directly appeals to a subset of the population – something like “there’s an error on your unemployment form” or “your Amazon package is late.”
These are effective because text spam is a numbers game: Amazon sends out 1.6 million packages every day, and because of the pandemic, millions of Americans are on some form of unemployment right now. The low cost of text messages – a quarter of a cent per text, when bought in bulk – means that the numbers game favors the scammers.
“There’s going to be a good proportion of people who think, ‘Actually, yeah, COVID pandemic, I need that money to survive.’ They click and put in their information,” Foss said. “In a couple of these, we’ve done some digging where the scammers that put this together are very poor programmers, and left a lot their stuff open. You can see all the victims that they’ve gotten. There’s hundreds of people that have unfortunately fallen for the scam and put in their information.”
These are well-designed rip-offs. Can you tell the difference between the actual Ohio unemployment site, and a fake unemployment site Foss spotted last week?
Aaron Foss / Nomorobo
Aaron Foss / Nomorobo
Give up?
It’s the URL. The scammers are algorithmically buying up fake but similar URLs to actual websites, and then spamming them out en masse, with the understanding that they have just a few hours until they’re shut down.
This particular registration, per documentation Foss sent over, had an IP address in Russia and had been obtained very recently.
“They know that they’re only going to get a couple of hours out of that URL,” Foss said. “When we see that it’s usually automated, it is actually one registrar that particularly turns a blind eye to these kinds of things.”
The scammers send the messages out through wholesale carriers. Wholesale carriers are smaller providers that sell access to the same phone system used by your carrier, which could be AT&T or Verizon. There are thousands of theses smaller carriers: following the deregulation of the US telecommunications industry, anyone can technically set up a carrier that can get their message into the US phone system, at which point it’s treated equal to any other text. The scammers simply need to find the weak link in the chain, a carrier willing to take money from sketchy texters.
“These are resellers, a wholesale carrier might sell to another wholesale carrier, which sells to another company, and you might be three or four steps down,” Foss said. “In general, they will find overseas companies, or domestic companies that they’ll look the other way.”
The phone number they send the text from is spoofed, the imitation website they built is designed to last on the order of hours, and typically there’s a personal identification value somewhere on the URL so if a person clicks once, the scammer knows they’re a number that’s likely to click again, so even if they don’t get you this time, they’ll have plenty of other chances.
After all, when the texts are a quarter of a penny and the domain name is a couple dollars, they don’t need a lot of people to be fooled in order to break even.
And when state unemployment offices use Social Security numbers as their usernames, the effects of falling for a phishing attack can have substantial long-term impacts beyond a thief stealing unemployment payments.
“The part of this that’s really the worst? They really are taking advantage of people that are already down on their luck,” Foss said. “The pandemic comes in, and you lose your job, and you need a way to eat and afford rent, and now you get scammed from somebody trying to steal your unemployment benefits.”
How to spot scam texts and how to stop them
Operating a robotext operation is ridiculously profitable, but often low-risk. When operators work outside the United States, it can be incredibly difficult to enforce actions against them.
Even when there is enforcement, collecting sizable fines is a separate matter. The FCC ordered TCPA violators to pay $208 million in fines from 2015 to 2019, but it only collected $6,790 as of 2019.
A spokesperson for the FCC declined to comment about any specific company or FCC investigatory methods or challenges.
The FCC did send a number of recommendations, urging consumers to “think twice before clicking any links in a text message,” and to “report texting scam attempts to your wireless service provider by forwarding unwanted texts to 7726.” The Federal Trade Commission offers a number of resources explaining the package phishing scams and other fake calls from Amazon or Apple. The Department of Justice is currently investigating unemployment-related fraud, including phishing scams.
Texting STOP will put an end to any legitimate marketer – lest they face thousands of dollars in FCC fines – but a scammer won’t care in the slightest. It would have the same effect as saying “STOP” to a mugger. If they don’t care about the possible consequences of doing identify theft, they probably aren’t worried about an FCC fine they’ll likely never pay anyways.
Applications that insert a filter between your cellphone and the wild west of the text messaging infrastructure may be the most effective way to screen out malicious texts.
“These guys are criminals,” Foss said. “They’re criminal businesses. They’re really good criminals. And they’re really good businesses. And when you put them together, this is what we got.”
Unwanted text messages, while generally not as annoying as telemarketing calls, can be very irritating.
Not only do spam texts clutter your text inbox and distract you with nonsense notifications, but if you don’t have unlimited texting with your cellular plan, you might be paying for junk. And some spam messages contain links to potentially dangerous malware.
It pays to try to stop – or at least minimize – spam texts when possible. Here are five steps you can take to filter or block spam texts.
1. Don’t respond to unwanted texts
You’re probably familiar with the way legitimate sources let you opt out of future text communication by replying “STOP.” Many spammers offer you the option to respond with STOP – but don’t do it.
Don’t text “STOP” unless you know the sender is trustworthy and legitimate.
Dave Johnson/Insider
Spammers use your reply – any reply, including STOP – as a signal that you received your message and are actively engaged in your messages, which can embolden them to send you more messages. Your information can also be sold to other spammers who are looking for “verified active” phone numbers.
2. Report spammers to your cellular provider
One way to counter spam texts is by reporting unwanted texters directly to your phone service provider. For most major carriers – including AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon – you can copy the offending message and text it to 7726.
You should receive a reply, which, depending on the carrier, might include a request to send the phone number that the spam came from. This probably won’t result in instant results for you, but it will contribute to cleaning up the texting ecosystem for everyone.
You can report potential spam to your phone carrier.
Dave Johnson/Insider
3. Filter potential spammers
Most phones have a setting to automatically filter potential spam texts so they don’t appear in the same list with important, legitimate texts from known contacts.
On an iPhone, open the Settings app and tap “Messages.” Scroll down and turn on “Filter Unknown Senders” by swiping the button to the right.
On Android, open the Messaging app and tap the three dots at the top right. In the drop-down menu, choose “Settings,” and then tap “Spam Protection.” Finally, turn on “Enable spam protection” by swiping the button to the right.
You can filter potential spammers on both iOS and Android.
Dave Johnson/Insider
4. Block specific spammers
If you get frequent spam from the same phone number, you can use your messaging app to block that number. Don’t count on this helping in every situation, though, because most spammers can appear to use a different number each time they reach out to you, so blocking individual numbers may have little effect.
On an iPhone, open the spam text and tap the user icon at the top of the page, then tap “info.” On the next page tap “info” again, and then tap “Block this Caller.”
You can block specific phone numbers, which is handy if you repeatedly get texts from the same sender.
Dave Johnson/Insider
On Android, the process may vary depending on the messaging app you’re using, but in general, you can tap the three dots at the top of the message and choose “Block number” from the drop-down menu.
5. Use a paid text-blocking app
Hopefully, some combination of the previous tips dramatically reduces the number of spam messages you receive. If you need additional assistance, though, you can turn to an app designed to block spam.
An app like RoboKiller, available for both iPhone and Android, can dramatically reduce the spam you receive, both in the form of phone calls and text messages. These apps aren’t free, though. RoboKiller has a 7-day free trial, and then costs either $5 per month or $40 per year.
