Google warns users not to respond to event invites from their phone, Instead, from a desktop or laptop computer, you should open the desktop Google Calendar app at calendar.google.com. After double clicking on the suspicious event, on the top of the screen tap on More Actions and then Report as Spam.

The scam or security issue was first discovered by researchers back in 2017

There is also a way to change the settings on Google Calendar to prevent this from happening to you. Go into the Google Calendar settings and under “Event,” change the setting from “Automatically add invitations” to “No, only show invitations to which I have responded.” At the same time, you should prevent Gmail entries from automatically adding events on the Calendar app by unchecking the box marked “Add automatically” under the “Events from Gmail” heading. These are changes that we told you to make back in June and now that Google is getting involved, you might want to take the time to protect yourself from this scam.

The fact that Google is now looking into this indicates how dangerous the issue is. Outside of stealing money from unsuspecting consumers (who are trusting the Google name, we should point out), security codes and other secret information could be obtained by terrorists with a goal far more deadly than stealing some cash. First spotted by two researchers at Black Hills Information Security in 2017, the scam/security threat was not addressed by Google until a few days ago.

The criminals trying to pull off this scheme are counting on the victims not paying attention to the notifications they are receiving. Blinded by prospects of receiving a bank wire or winning a contest, there are many phone owners who wouldn’t think twice about providing the requested information. Multiply this by the huge number of Gmail and Calendar uses and you can see why it is an enticing scheme for those who aim to separate people from their hard-earned money. Let’s just be glad that Google finally woke up before a plot more deadly was devised using two seemingly innocuous apps like Gmail and Calendar.