Apple announced that it has prevented more than $9 billion in fraudulent transactions over the past five years (more than $2 billion in 2024 alone). The disclosure comes as part of the company's effort to enhance transparency and security in the App Store ecosystem .
According to the company, the App Store continues to be a target for a wide range of digital threats – from deceptive apps aimed at stealing personal data, to fraudulent payment systems that attempt to defraud unsuspecting users.
As part of its efforts to combat such phenomena, Apple has disabled more than 46,000 developer accounts due to suspected or confirmed fraud and rejected over 139,000 new registration applications from developers who attempted to join the platform with nefarious intentions.
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On the user front, Apple prevented the creation of more than 711 million suspicious customer accounts, while disabling nearly 129 million existing accountsthat were involved – or may be involved – in malicious activities such as spam, fake reviews, rating manipulation or search result tampering.
App Store: Extra security statistics for 2024:
- 10,000+ illegal apps were blocked from pirated “storefronts” – they included malware, pornographic content, gambling, and pirated versions of popular App Store apps.
- Apple blocked 4.6 million attempts to install or run unauthorized apps outside the App Store.
- 1.9 million app submissions were rejected because they violated security standards, trust rules, privacy policies, or showed signs of fraud.
- More than 37,000 apps were removed due to suspected or confirmed fraudulent activity, while over 43,000 submissions were rejected for containing hidden or undocumented functionality.
- Apple also reported rejecting more than 320,000 apps that either copied existing software, were deemed spammy, or attempted to mislead users. In addition, about 400,000 apps were taken down for violating privacy policies.
- We removed 7,400 suspicious apps from the charts and 9,500 deceptive apps from search results in the App Store, reducing their exposure to users. We also over 143 million fraudulent ratings and reviews to protect the integrity of the user experience.
- Nearly 4.7 million stolen credit cards and more than 1.6 million accounts so that they could not re-execute transactions.
See also: Apple announces new accessibility features
The statistics announced by Apple are impressive in scale and send a strong message about how it treats the security and integrity of the App Store.
At a time when it is under pressure from regulators, governments, and competitors over how "closed" the App Store ecosystem is, this data serves as an argument that the strict control model protects users.
See also: Apple fixes serious security flaws in iOS and macOS
Every scam, every fake review, and every decoy app costs users trust. This active crackdown is a way for Apple to reduce the risk of losing credibility, especially in an era when trust in technology is critical.
Source: thehackernews.com
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