Google accused of stomping on rivals as it stamps out annoying Calendar spam Google recently changed the default setting for adding invitations to its Calendar service in a way that interferes with third-party products. The Big G said it's just trying to block spam while some in the industry are calling foul. Earlier this week, Mike Adams, CEO of Grain, an organizational service for managing customer …
So we should have all stayed on Windows XP and left protection to the various anti-virus providers and basic user complacency ?
I disagree. Spam is a nuisance and a threat, and any measure to curtail it should be welcomed with open arms.
On top of that, if you make a product that can only succeed based on someone else's product, then you shouldn't complain when new and better security measures make your life more difficult. You modify your product to improve it and integrate the necessary security, demonstrating that you have your users' interests at heart.
Wailing that everything should have remained as it was is only you not willing to evolve. That does not inspire confidence.
So many downvotes? I've honestly never seen calendar spam that doesn't come from Google. Sometimes I reject everything from 2607:F8B0::/32 and 2a00:1450::/29 for a week when Google's spam gets totally out of control. Even the linked Reg article says it's Google: https://www.theregister.com/2019/06/11/google_kaspersky_gmail_spam/
Yes, a few legitimate e-mails get blocked. I remind people that Google has spam problems and that's the way it is when you're using them.
...unless the booker previously emailed the host, or explicitly accepted the invitation in email.
Well, there's the problem. That really should have been in place and the default from Day 1.
If you're building something in this day and age that doesn't start OOB with the attitude; "The answer is Fuck Off, now what's the question?", you are positively encouraging misuse.
Indeed.
I'm finding it very hard to understand why I would *ever* want to have an entry appear in my calendar that wasn't from a *very* small number of privileged people (and that most certainly is *not* everyone in my address book!) or wasn't added by my own actions, including explicitly accepting an invitation in an email.
Even if an external third-party system was used to let someone add entries, surely you'd expect to go through some steps to allow them the privilege? Not just find out that the whole reason they work is because they can drop random crap in, but don't worry, we are the good guys and promise not to misbehave!
After over 20 years of using various flavours of Linux, and sneaking them onto desktops where I can, the lack of anything that fills the Outlook hole from MS still perplexes me.
It used to be the #1 application a standard office based user would look for when they fired up their machine.
Now it's gMail and gCalendar, and that's that.
Evolution (add evolution-ews for O365/Exchange access) or Thunderbird (add OWL for O365/Exchange access) seem to work well for me. Thunderbird was a bit ropey a few years back but has improved in the later versions. They are also both much better than Outlook at handling multiple external calendars.
I don't want thing to appear in my calendar just because someone emailed me an invitation; I want to explicitly accept them first.
Google's change here sounds good to me, and is in fact how my current Evolution mail client works as well.
No wonder the spammers are complaining when they no longer have a way to push things into my calendar without my approval.
"That commitment, we're told, involves further adjustments to user controls and the expectation is that these tweaks will address at least some of the concerns raised by third-parties."
This means check your options every week, because they're going to keep defaulting back. No idea why anyone uses Google for work to begin with. There is such a thing as protecting sensitive information, and you aren't protecting information when you use a known data hoovering company for anything.
Google have basically changed the default to the way I've always thought it worked anyway? The way that, surely, almost any sane person would want?
I mean, there are integration APIs, if you integrate with another app it should be easy to grant it permission to create events and so on, right? I mean that should be a no-brainer.
So as long as they've got either a plan to open the APIs, or some instructions on how to retool for the new normal, I have to say I think I'm on Google's side here. (The usual cavetas about snooping, advertising, etc, aside)
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