That Weird Event on Your Calendar? You Probably Weren’t Hacked. Here’s What Really Happened.
Picture this: you open Google Calendar and there’s an event you don’t remember creating. It’s got some strange promise attached to it — a “secret” for making money on Etsy, a suspicious link, maybe even a fake “confirmation number” to make it look official. And here’s the part that really makes your stomach drop:
It says YOU are the organizer.
Your first thought is probably, “Did someone break into my account?” Take a breath — almost certainly, no. This is a well-known scam trick, and once you understand how it works, it’s simple to shut down for good.
So how did it get there?
Scammers have found two different back doors into your calendar, and neither one requires hacking anything.
Door #1: A spoofed invitation. Scammers can send calendar invites to huge lists of email addresses, the same way spam emails get sent. If your calendar is set to accept invites “from everyone,” these land directly on your calendar — no click required. Some scammers even fake the “organizer” field so it shows your own name, which is exactly what makes this feel so personal and unsettling.
Door #2: A fake “reservation.” This one’s sneakier. Google Calendar has a helpful feature that scans your email for things like flight confirmations, restaurant reservations, or event tickets, and automatically adds them to your calendar for you. Scammers have started writing their junk emails to look like a booking confirmation — complete with a fake confirmation number — specifically to trick this feature into creating a calendar event out of thin air. This is likely how it happened if you already have your invitation settings locked down and the mystery events are still showing up.
What NOT to do
- Don’t click the link in the event, no matter how tempting the offer sounds.
- Don’t click “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe.” Any response — even Decline — sends a message back to the scammer confirming your email address is real and being read. That makes you a more attractive target, not less.
The only safe moves are to delete the event or, if the option is there, report it as spam.
How to shut both doors for good
Fix #1 — Stop unwanted invitations from landing automatically:
- Open Google Calendar and click the gear icon (top right), then Settings.
- In the menu on the left, click Event settings.
- Find “Add invitations to my calendar” and change it to “Only if the sender is known.”
Fix #2 — Stop Gmail from creating events out of your emails:
- Same Settings menu, left-hand side — look for “Events from Gmail” (or “Google Workspace smart features” if you use a work or business account).
- Uncheck “Show events automatically created by Gmail in my calendar.”
- Confirm the pop-up.
A quick note: turning off Fix #2 stops new junk events from appearing, but it won’t erase ones already sitting on your calendar — you’ll need to open those and delete them yourself. It will also mean Google stops auto-adding genuinely useful things, like real flight or restaurant confirmations. For most people, that’s a small trade for not having strangers’ scams land on your calendar unannounced.
The takeaway
If you ever see something on your calendar you didn’t put there, it doesn’t mean your account was broken into — and it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. It means a scammer found a clever way to sneak past a default setting. Now you know both doors, and how to lock them.