Chinese spammers target Apple iCalendar users with sketchy invites for Black Friday deals

It seems that some Apple users are being plagued with Chinese spam in the form of iCalendar invites.

Searches for "iCal spam" have spiked over the past month, and on Friday, the unsolicited invitations prompted many to complain to Apple and post on social media.

Tweet: .@Apple I'm getting phishing attempts via iCal, a component I can't remove on my work machine. Please fix this.

Tweet: Hey @AppleSupport what's up with all these Black Friday spam events getting directly into my iCal?

Tweet: Been using Gmail for my personal email again for a year. iCloud calendar invite spam may finally get me to move my contacts & calendars.

Tweet: My Apple ID is a hard-to-guess, private-to-Apple address. Yet I still get iCloud Calendar invitation spam… are the shields up @AppleSupport?

Many users complained of deals in Chinese for Ray-Ban glasses or Ugg boots. A spokesman for Ugg parent company Deckers said the company doesn't do joint promotions and does not distribute iCalendar promotions, adding that the UGG is one of the most counterfeited brands globally.

CNBC also reached out to Ray-Ban parent Luxottica and Apple for comment.

Tweet: Anyone else getting Calendar invite spam? I dont want to decline and tell them its a live contact, but I dont want $20 ray ban alerts either

Tweet: Wow calendar event spam became a big thing very quickly. So many invites to buy Chinese knockoff Ray-Bans.

Luckily, tech blogs like 9to5Mac were able to find one solution to the spam: creating a new calendar and moving all the unwanted invitations to it, then deleting the calendar.

Tweet: if you get #icloud calendar spam, don't decline the invite, move to a new iCloud calendar and delete the calendar. decline notifies