Google Calendar 'Gaming gift from Santa Inside' bug: Here's what we know

Google Calendar thrives when you want to keep track of your own events and share your calendars with others. It’s one of the best tools for managing both personal and work schedules.

It is both easy to use and quite effective. But not when it starts creating events and dates on its own, which is exactly what’s happening at the moment.

Google Calendar ‘Gaming gift from Santa Inside’ bug

Some users (1,2,3,4) are reporting that Google Calendar is generating random events following an unrelated email or message.

“Gaming GIFT from Santa inside” has been added to my Google Calendar without my knowledge. It says “automatically added from email”, and when I read the email, it looks like it’s from GOG, but was it automatically added to the calendar by email?
Source

It seems that these emails are being sent from the GOG community which is offering a Winter Sale starting January 2. Resultantly, users are getting invites for the same, titled ‘Gaming gift from Santa Inside’.

However, Google Calendar is using these emails as triggers to create events. Not just that, after doing so it says that the event is ‘Automatically added from email’.

This is seemingly adding to people’s frustration and suspicion regarding the credibility of the event (1,2,3,4).

In addition, it appears that some users are also receiving emails from an ‘Unknown Organizer’.

Just had a mysterious Google calendar event pop up from “Unknown Organizer.” I deleted it, but WTF, Google?
Source

This email ID ‘[email protected]’ is currently sending such messages and invites. Surprisingly, this sender has also previously been reported for calendar phishing (1,2).

Here’s how you can get rid of it

We have come across a workaround that shares some steps that should help you manage or stop such promotional emails.

Unfortunately, Google is yet to comment on the issue where the Calendar is mysteriously creating events from emails like ‘Gaming gift from Santa Inside’.

We’ll keep tabs on the latest developments and update this article as and when something noteworthy comes up.

Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated Google Section so be sure to follow them as well.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.