How to Get Rid of iPhone Calendar Virus [Easy Solutions]

If you have an excess of events and invitations in your calendar app, you might think that you’re yet another victim of the so-called iPhone calendar virus. 

Here’s what exactly that means, how the messages ended up on your calendar, and how to get rid of the iPhone calendar virus. 

iPhone Calendar Virus 2022: Where Does iPhone Get the Calendar Virus From?

The iPhone Calendar “virus” is not technically a virus.

It’s a phishing scam where iPhone users are tricked into subscribing to a calendar, which then adds bogus events and deceptive invites to their Calendar app.

In most cases, clicking on any of these spammy calendar messages results in downloading different types of malware onto your device. Sometimes, these links can take you to shady websites that may steal your information. 

But how did you end up with a subscription to a calendar– without knowing- in the first place? 

You Accidentally Clicked on Fake Captchas

Captchas are those little puzzles that pop up when you visit a website and have to solve to prove you are not a bot.

Scam websites often display fake captchas. Clicking OK or checking the “I’m not a robot” box triggers a prompt to subscribe to the calendar, which gives bad actors a green light to fill your calendar with suspicious links.

The pop-up usually looks like the one below.

image credit: www.malwarebytes.com

The Spammer Knows Your Email Address

If you enter the email that’s connected to your calendar app on a dubious website that sells information to third parties for profit or a company that holds your email suffers a data breach, spammers can get hold of your information and use it to their advantage.

In this particular case, it means sending fake invites and events to your calendar app.

Worth noting: As long as you didn’t click on the spam messages, you’re unlikely to end up with a virus on your device. If you think you did, here’s how to check for viruses on your iPhone.

How to Get Rid of iPhone Calendar Virus

Getting rid of iOS calendar spam is very straightforward. There are two main ways to do that.

Delete Spam Events With the iPhone Calendar App

The easiest way to fix to get rid of the “virus” is to delete it in your Calendar app.

1. Open the Calendar app on your iPhone.
2. Tap Calendars. 
3. Look for any event that you don’t recognize and tap the More Info icon next to it.
4. Scroll down and tap Delete Calendar. 

If you have an iPhone running iOS 14 or later, you can unsubscribe from the calendar:

1. Open the Calendars app.
2. Tap on one of the spam events.
3. Select Unsubscribe from this Calendar. 
4. Tap Unsubscribe again to confirm. 

Clear Calendar Virus from iPhone Settings

If deleting the suspicious event doesn’t remove the Calendar virus from your iPhone, another fix you can try is to unsubscribe from these events from your iPhone’s Settings. 

To do that:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down, tap Calendar, and then Accounts. (if you have an iPhone running iOS 13, tap Passwords & Accounts and then on Accounts)
3. Open Subscribed Calendars.
4. If you see a calendar that you don’t recognize, tap on it, and select Delete Account.

How to Stop iPhone Calendar Spam

Here are a few ways to prevent scammers from making their way to your calendar app. 

Report the Spam Event as Junk

Reporting the spam to Apple will not only stop it from reappearing on your device, but it will prevent the scammers from tricking other users into subscribing to the spammy calendar or, at the very least, prevent them from sending messages to their devices.

To report spam on your iPhone:

1. Navigate to the iCloud website and log into your account. 
2. Open the Calendar app, select any spammy event, and tap Report as Junk. 

This will remove the fake event from all devices linked to your iCloud account and notify Apple about it.

Disable Pop-Ups in Safari

Pop-up ads that appear on dubious websites are often designed to infect you with spam when you click on them – which is one of the ways the spammy events and invitations can make it to your Calendar app.

Luckily, the iPhone comes with a built-in pop-up blocker that can prevent these ads from appearing in your browser.

1. Go to your iPhone’s Settings.
2. Tap Safari.
3. Toggle the Block Pop-ups button on. 

Set up Cloudflare DNS on iPhone 

Using a privacy-focused DNS server, such as Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1, will stop the iPhone calendar virus and other types of malware from infecting your device. 

1.1.1.1 is a public DNS resolver, owned and operated by Cloudflare, that offers a fast and secure way to browse the internet.

The resolver is privacy-friendly, doesn’t sell user data to advertisers, and is currently the fastest DNS resolver available, with a global response time of only 14 ms.

To set it up on your iPhone:

1. Open the Settings app and select Wi-Fi.
2. Select your preferred Wi-Fi network. 
3. Tap on Configure DNS and switch from Automatic to Manual configuration.
4. Under DNS Servers, tap Add Server and type 1.1.1.1.
5. Tap Save to save your changes. 

Bottom Line

Accidentally agreeing to a dubious calendar subscription might result in your calendar app being flooded with spam invitations and bogus events. If you’re wondering how to remove the Calendar virus from your iPhone, the answer is simple: All you’ll need to do is remove the spam from your phone.