My Google Calendar is Not My Own

December 8, 2014 5:37 AM

I posted about getting misdirected GMail. It's gotten worse. Now my Google calendar is chockful of someone else's life.

Lots of you said you'd had similar experience with GMail. Are your calendars affected, too? Is there a fix?

posted by tizzie to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

Are these things showing up as if they are yours (same color) or as a shared calendar (different color than your own)?

In any case, try this: Go to Settings/General, and look at the question "Automatically add invitations to my calendar:" If this is set to either of the YES options, change is to "NO". That will prevent invitations from others who are erroneously inviting your Gmail address from showing up. You may still see those invites in your Gmail but you can set up a filter to kill them.
posted by beagle at 5:49 AM on December 8, 2014

I've gotten invites for people on my Gcal, most recently by a car stereo place in Melbourne, Australia, who thought they were scheduling one of their employees who has the same name as me, and who gave them my e-mail address by mistake. I'm guessing they use a shared Gcal to manage their work schedules. So yes, it does happen, and it has happened to me.

My memory is a bit fuzzy on the details, but I think I was able to figure out who was adding the events to my calendar and wrote them a nice e-mail explaining the situation. They were very apologetic and that has never happened again.

In other cases I've just deleted the events and moved on. As I've said before in one of the previous Gmail threads, if someone can't be bothered to get their own e-mail address right, then I can't be bothered to care that they're not getting notifications.

This hasn't happened to me in a while, so I'm not sure if I found a way to block those requests. I think I had to play around with the Sharing settings for the calendar to lock it down to only myself and my wife.
posted by ralan at 5:54 AM on December 8, 2014

If these do show up as your events as opposed to shared calendar events, there are a couple ways this could happen as well. If your Google account was on an Android phone that you lent or sold without wiping it, that person could be adding the events. Or if the Google calendar is synched to an Apple ID/iTunes calendar and someone plugged their iPhone into your computer (or a computer where you were signed into iTunes).

As beagle mentioned, first look to see if they're yours or a shared calendar. If they're "your" events, is there enough information to find out who may be adding them? If not, you may want to change your password, which should stop everything from synching.
posted by Woodroar at 6:01 AM on December 8, 2014

I was able to find this by opening up calendar in an account I don't use Calendar on, thankfully:

What's new in Google Calendar

Gmail on your calendar
Reservations for flights, restaurants and more, automatically added from email. You can change this in Settings.

If this really just started and you're still getting a lot of junk email, then it could be related to that.
posted by Sequence at 6:22 AM on December 8, 2014

Response by poster: Most of it is someone who is a minister at church in the UK - I have all the sermons, meetings, and events for them. But yesterday I got flight details for someone in Tulsa. That seems a little too personal. And I wonder, if I put my appointments on there, can the "other me" see them as well?
posted by tizzie at 6:33 AM on December 8, 2014

Response by poster: beagle, I did what you suggested but I can still see all of them.
posted by tizzie at 6:34 AM on December 8, 2014

Response by poster: Woodroar, this isn't anything where I lent my phone out. It's total strangers. I do use an Android phone, not synched to any Apple stuff.

I get a lot of misdirected emails, too. My email address is my actual name ([e-mail])
posted by tizzie at 7:01 AM on December 8, 2014

beagle, I did what you suggested but I can still see all of them.

Yes, because those events were added when the setting permitted them to be added. Going forward that should not happen. You could test this by having someone else with a Gmail account try sharing an event to your calendar.
posted by beagle at 7:01 AM on December 8, 2014

It's possible that their Google ID is [e-mail], where their first and last names are identical to yours. That used to happen to me - my gmail was first.middle.last@gmail and I got mail for [e-mail]. I eventually abandoned the address.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:59 AM on December 8, 2014

(Eustacescrubb, Gmail doesn't recognize periods, so if you got mail for firstmiddlelast it was functioning as intended. Most likely someone else was giving out the wrong address - who had the same full name as you. More here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10313?hl=en )
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 8:03 AM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Not a rhetorical question - if Gmail doesn't recognize periods, then why would they allow someone to have firstname.lastname@gmail if there's already a firstnamelastname@gmail taken? I would hate to have to abandon my firstnamelastname@gmail account. If worse comes to worse, I'd abandon the Google calendar (except that our office uses it to send meeting appointments for work).
posted by tizzie at 8:17 AM on December 8, 2014

That's impossible in gmail, because then you would have two users with the same unique identifier. I suspect that the other person has been giving out your email address by accident (maybe they're firstnamemiddleinitiallastname@gmail or firstname-lastname@gmail or something) and so their minister etc is adding you to calendars and sending you emails.

There are a number of asks here about what to do in this situation, although with the calendars it sounds like a particularly big pain. Have you considered emailing the people (BCC'd) who have added you or misdirected emails, and letting them know? That's probably as much due diligence as you require.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 8:23 AM on December 8, 2014

Response by poster: Yes. I have a canned reply based on advice in my previous AskMe thread.

"You have sent this message to an incorrect email address. The Anne that you intended to send it to is not at this email address. I do not know another email address for that person. I have deleted your email and any attachments. Have a pleasant day."
posted by tizzie at 8:24 AM on December 8, 2014

Response by poster: Yes, I was willing to live with it, pretty much, until this calendar thing got out of control.
posted by tizzie at 8:25 AM on December 8, 2014

Best answer: So these calendar items are directly on your calendar? I would double check and make sure no unauthorized devices or services are using your account in https://security.google.com/settings/security/activity and https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions -- then you can be sure no one else has accessed your Google accounts.

It sounds like your have been invited to see items because the calendar items were sent to the wrong address. In your calendar settings, you can change it to "no" where it says "Automatically add invitations to my calendar" and maybe that will prevent new stuff from being added. Also, in calendar settings, ensure you're not subscribed to any calendars that aren't yours. (Looking at your calendar, on the left-hand side, there's a down-facing arrow next to "My calendars." Click that arrow and select "settings." In there, check the "calendars" tab for calendars that aren't yours and the "general" tab to turn off auto-accepting events.)

*Note that I think you need to delete the old events because you already auto-accepted them. But going forward, these measures should prevent new events from being added.
posted by AppleTurnover at 9:50 AM on December 8, 2014

Response by poster: Thanks for the links, AppleTurnover. I checked both of them and there's nothing suspicious on either one. But AH-HA! On your suggestion, I looked in the settings and it looks like somehow the calendar notifications of "Prairie Street" were being added to my calendar, and Google says that Prarie Street is a church! So it looks like THAT'S the answer!

Thank you, everyone!
posted by tizzie at 11:15 AM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Great! Glad you don't have to abandon your Gmail address after all!
posted by AppleTurnover at 4:36 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]