Google is adding a new tool to Calendar to better protect users from spam. You can now choose to only display events that come from known senders. This will help you avoid annoying and spammy invites clogging up your calendar app, which can also be malicious. The new tool is available from Event settings in Calendar settings.

According to Google, people in the same company domain as you, those in your contact list, and those you’ve interacted with before qualify as known senders. Email event invitations from these senders will automatically appear on your calendar. If you get invites from “unknown senders,” they will not show up until you accept them manually.

As you might expect, this is an optional feature. If your work involves regularly receiving calendar event invitations from unknown people, you can always choose to have all invitations appear on your calendar. But if you’re tired of those spammy invitations, Google’s latest tool makes it incredibly easy to stop them. Since you have the option to manually put filtered-out invitations to your calendar, you won’t be missing out on anything. Just make sure that you’re keeping a tab on those “spammy” invitations.

By default, Google Calendar will always show invitations from everyone. But admins can change it at the domain level. End users can also see and change the default option in Calendar settings. Additionally, Google is letting admins set the default reply option for their users in the Admin console. But end users once again have the option to indicate their preference.

The new spam-filtering tool for Google Calendar is rolling out to users in both Scheduled Release and Rapid Release domains starting this Wednesday. It should reach all eligible Google Workspace customers over the next couple of weeks. The feature will also be available to legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers and users with personal Google Accounts.

Google Calendar now protects you against spam

Over the past few months, Google has added numerous security measures to its Workspace tools to protect users from spam or malicious links. Gmail, Drive, Docs, Messages, and many other Google apps and services have these filters built-in. But this is a never-ending battle as crooks always find a new way to target unsuspecting victims. Calendar is the latest app to get some sort of protection against spam. If Google Calendar is your go-to calendar app, watch out for the new option in the coming days.