Keeping the App Store secure is as difficult as it has ever been, and Apple has the numbers to prove it. On Tuesday, Apple revealed in a blog post that the App Store stopped over $2 billion in fraudulent transactions and rejected close to 1.7 million app submissions that failed to meet the App Store’s standards for privacy, security, and content.
As Apple notes, online payments have become increasingly common in recent years. Apple Pay and StoreKit are two technologies that hundreds of thousands of apps use to safely and securely sell goods and services on the App Store. They also help to ensure that customers aren’t able to use stolen credit card numbers to make purchases.
Apple blocked more than 3.8 million stolen credit cards from being used to make a purchase on the App Store in 2022 alone. In the process, Apple also banned 714,000 accounts from making a transaction on the App Store again. As a result, Apple was able to stop $2.09 billion worth of fraudulent purchases from going through last year.
Another major concern for Apple is fraudulent developer accounts. In 2021, Apple closed over 800,000 developer accounts for potentially fraudulent activity. Thanks to Apple’s novel methods and protocols preventing the creation of fraudulent accounts in the first place, Apple only had to terminate 428,000 accounts in 2022. Meanwhile, the company rejected a whopping 105 million Apple Developer Program enrollments for suspected fraud.
Other steps that Apple took to keep App Store users safe included disabling over 282 million customer accounts associated with fraudulent and abusive activity, removing more than 147 million ratings and reviews for failing to meet moderation standards, and preventing nearly 84,000 potentially fraudulent apps from reaching users.
“Apple’s work to keep the App Store a safe and trusted place for users and developers is never done,” the company said in its blog post. “As bad actors evolve their dishonest tactics and methods of deception, Apple supplements its antifraud initiatives with feedback gleaned from a myriad of channels — from news stories to social media to AppleCare calls — and will continue to develop new approaches and tools designed to prevent fraud from harming App Store users and developers.”
