Over the last five years, Apple’s App Store has averted more than $9 billion in fraudulent purchases, with over $2 billion expected in 2024. The platform has been an efficient way for consumers and developers to expand their enterprises worldwide. According to Apple’s annual App Store fraud prevention research, the store has blocked more than $9 billion in fraudulent purchases over the past five years. The platform’s robust commerce infrastructure enables users to transact safely across 175 geographic areas. With an average of 813 million weekly visitors, the App Store is a dependable source for consumers to download and discover new apps.
Apple is extremely diligent in maintaining the App Store’s secure marketplace, as bad actors devise new ways to deceive customers. These threats include deceptive applications and fraudulent payment systems. Apple’s comprehensive strategy encompasses teams from across the organisation identifying, investigating, and stopping harmful behaviour before it reaches consumers.
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Apple’s strong anti-fraud system has helped prevent fraudulent developer and customer accounts from being established and removed. Due to fraud concerns, the company is said to have closed over 146,000 developer accounts and denied 139,000 enrolments in 2024. Furthermore, it denied over 711 million user account creations and terminated roughly 129 million accounts last year, prohibiting dangerous behaviour such as spamming or manipulating ratings and reviews.
Apple also attempts to prevent unsafe software from being distributed through pirate shopfronts, finding and banning over 10,000 illegitimate apps. This stops creators’ apps from being duplicated, changed, or weaponised to transmit harmful malware. Furthermore, Apple has blocked roughly 4.6 million attempts to install or run unlawfully distributed programs outside of the App Store or authorised third-party markets.
According to the company, every week, Apple’s App Review team examines roughly 150,000 app submissions to ensure they fulfil the company’s quality and safety requirements. In 2024, the team assisted over 220,000 developers in launching their first app on the App Store. App Review uses both human and automated methods to discover and respond to potentially dangerous apps. Over 7.7 million entries were assessed, with more than 1.9 million rejected for failing to fulfil Apple’s security, dependability, and user experience criteria, such as privacy infractions or fraud issues.
Malicious actors frequently use fraudulent methods to circumvent App Review’s protections and get harmful apps onto the App Store. App Review deleted more than 37,000 applications for illicit conduct by 2024. Other frequent strategies include hiding secret features and functionality in code and only enabling them once the app passes App Review. Apple also takes action against apps that aim to deceive or defraud customers by masquerading potentially dangerous malware as harmless apps. App Review rejected 400,000 app submissions in 2024 due to privacy issues.
Apple has taken rapid action against applications that trick the system to improve their App Store rating. In 2024, Apple processed more than 1.2 billion ratings and reviews, deleting over 143 million fake ones. Furthermore, it deleted almost 7,400 apps from App Store charts and approximately 9,500 fraudulent apps from search results. These initiatives create a fair playing field for developers.
According to the firm, it is dedicated to safeguarding consumers from scams and payment risks, saving more than $2 billion in fraudulent transactions by 2024. It employs Apple Pay, which uses a device-specific number and a unique transaction code to prevent card theft. Apple has discovered roughly 4.7 million stolen credit cards and blocked more than 1.6 million accounts from transacting again. Developers may leverage Apple’s in-app purchase system, which provides a safe environment for privacy, fraud prevention, and easy transaction administration. Apple will continue to strengthen its commitment to providing people with options to report suspected fraud.
