Apple is one of the top premium mobile brands that has prevented over $2 billion in fraudulent transactions last year and over $9 billion in the last five years, as per its App Store fraud prevention analysis annual report. The preventions of this amount are estimated based on the potentially fraudulent transactions and submissions of 2 million risky apps by blocking them from reaching their users.
On May 27, Apple released a blog post where they mentioned about this news. It explained how the App Store has become a safe and trustworthy for users and developers to grow their business. Apple's App Store receives over 813 million visitors a week in 175 regions around the sphere forecasting the most secure experience for users to download their favorite apps.
The Apple App Store, which sees an average of more than that, has to ensure the safety of both developer and customer accounts, not to mention securing the process of vetting apps and customer reviews. Apple stated, "Preserving the App Store's safe and secure marketplace requires constant vigilance, as bad actors continue to evolve their tactics in an attempt to defraud users. These threats range from deceptive apps designed to steal personal information to fraudulent payment schemes that attempt to exploit users."
Apple has also done various similar things in order to protect its users from using or making any such transaction that might become a scam or fraud. Here, the company keeps tracking criminal or suspicious activity that is also happening outside the marketplace; they have also detected and banned more than 10K apps because they were made public through pirate storefronts in the past year since the content inside their apps is found signs of "pornography apps, gambling, and stolen versions of legitimate App Store applications."
In their annual report, they discussed how they managed to tackle fraudulent apps and took strict and bold actions against them. Apple said, "Apple takes swift action against apps that attempt to cheat the system and boost their ranking on the App Store, such as by using bots or paid services to artificially inflate download numbers or post fake five-star reviews." It also shares that by keeping users safe, "Apple will continue to build on its commitment to provide users with the safest and most secure experience on the App Store, which includes empowering users with resources to get help and report suspected fraud."
Any app that makes its path for listing in the App Store must go through some set of procedures or review processes that are strictly performed by the Apple Review Team, who have a deep understanding of the review and safety guidelines. They noted that "Apple employs a comprehensive approach to combating fraud on the App Store, with teams across the company working to detect, investigate, and prevent malicious activity before it can reach users." Here is the key summary of Apple's annual report.
Apple Account Fraud in 2024
According to the Account Fraud in 2024 reports, here are some of the main highlights:-
- More than 139,000 enrollments from the fraudulent developers have been verified and rejected.
- More than 711 million customer account creations have been rejected because they are found to be potentially suspicious and fraudulent.
- Around 4.6 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed illicitly outside the App Store were blocked by Apple.
Apple App Review in 2024
According to the App Review in 2024, here's what the reports say about the app submissions.
- Over 7.7 million app submissions were reviewed by the App Store in 2024.
- More than 1.9 million of app submissions are rejected because they are failing to meet the application standards that are set by the Apple for their users.
- More than 400,000 app submissions were rejected just because they were violating the privacy concerns set by Apple.
- More than 320,000 of app submissions have faced rejections because they are found spamming, copycats, or misleading to Apple users.
Apple Discovery Fraud in 2024
As per the reports these are the key highlights of their discovery fraud reports, which include
- Processing of more than 1.2 billion app ratings and reviews.
- Removing more than 143 million app ratings and reviews that are suspicious of fraudulent activity.
- Deleting of more than 7400 apps from the Apple's App Store charts because they are found potentially fraudulent.
- Around 9500 apps were found misleading and removed from the search results in the Apple App Store.
Apple Payment and Credit Card Fraud in 2024
The Protecting App Store Users reports on the payment and credit card fraud of 2024 says a lot about fraudulent activities and how uses are protected. These are the major stats that includes.
- Prevention of users from more than $2 billion of potentially fraudulent transactions.
- Preventing users from having any transaction from more than 4.7 million credit cards that have been stolen.
- Banning more than 1.6 million accounts from repeating transactions again and again.