- Calendar spam now accounts for seven percent of all digital appointment invitations
- GMX integrates new feature that deletes calendar spam with a single click
- GMX now filters over half a billion spam mails every week.
London. For more than 40 years internet criminals have been sending out spam emails. Numbers continue to rise from year to year, and email providers are having to use stronger and stronger filters to protect their customers. Leading email services provider GMX has a high detection rate of more than 99 percent. That’s why spammers are constantly having to change their methods to make sure they reach their victims’ inboxes. And now a new type of spam is on the rise: fake appointments, or ‘calendar spam’ that ends up in the inbox and calendar at the same time. To protect its users, GMX now offers the ability to remove this calendar spam with a single click.
The double threat of this new spam method is that instead of just sending an email, as with conventional spam, calendar spam sends unwanted appointments as well. These can attack in three ways: The first time is when an appointment invitation is sent by email to the inbox; the second time is when it’s an entry in the calendar; and the third time is if the appointment contains a reminder function.
"Currently, calendar spam accounts for seven percent of all digital appointment invitations - and this figure is rising. If, for example, you receive special ‘discounts,’ or the sender is unknown, then users should be extremely sceptical," says Jan Oetjen, Managing Director of GMX.
In terms of content, there is no difference to classic email spam: Internet criminals use fake dates to spread malware, links to phishing sites or unwanted advertising.