Apple Prevents $9 Billion in Fraud Over Five Years in Response to Increasing App Store Security Threats

Apple recently disclosed that it successfully thwarted over $9 billion in fraudulent transactions over the past five years, including more than $2 billion in 2024 alone.

The company highlighted the various threats faced by the App Store, which range from deceptive applications aimed at stealing personal information to fraudulent payment schemes that target unsuspecting users. In response to these threats, Apple terminated over 46,000 developer accounts due to fraud concerns and also rejected an additional 139,000 developer enrollments to prevent malicious entities from submitting harmful apps to the App Store.

In its commitment to user security, Apple rejected over 711 million customer account creation requests and deactivated nearly 129 million customer accounts last year. These measures were designed to obstruct activities such as spamming and the manipulation of ratings and reviews, which could undermine the integrity of the App Store.

Additional noteworthy statistics for 2024 include:

– Identification and blocking of more than 10,000 illegitimate apps on pirate storefronts, including those containing malware, pornography, gambling-related content, and pirated versions of legitimate applications.
– Prevention of approximately 4.6 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed illegally outside the App Store or approved third-party marketplaces.
– Rejection of over 1.9 million App Store submissions for failing to comply with security, reliability, privacy standards, or fraud concerns.
– Removal of more than 37,000 apps linked to fraudulent activity and rejection of over 43,000 app submissions for containing hidden or undocumented features.
– Denial of more than 320,000 submissions for copying existing apps, being classified as spam, or misleading users, in addition to approximately 400,000 submissions for privacy violations.
– Removal of over 7,400 potentially fraudulent apps from App Store charts and nearly 9,500 deceptive apps from search results.
– Elimination of over 143 million fraudulent ratings and reviews from the App Store.
– Identification of nearly 4.7 million stolen credit cards and banning of over 1.6 million accounts from future transactions.

In comparison, Apple had previously reported preventing more than $1.8 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2023 and over $2 billion in 2022. In the previous year, the company also terminated close to 118,000 developer accounts.

This reporting of App Store fraud prevention comes on the heels of a similar disclosure by Google, which announced it blocked over 2.36 million policy-violating Android apps from its Google Play app marketplace in 2024 and banned over 158,000 problematic developer accounts.

The annual analysis of App Store fraud arrives at a time when Apple is under increasing scrutiny regarding its App Store policies. A recent ruling in the United States mandated that Apple permit iOS apps to display links or buttons directing users to make purchases outside of the App Store.