Apple today shared a report highlighting how it has prevented it over the past year “potentially fraudulent transactions” on the App Store for worth about $2 billion.
The App Store, Apple says, was launched in 2008 with the mission to achieve two important objectives: establish a reliable and secure platform to enable users to discover and download apps safely and provide developers with the opportunity to showcase their ideas and grow their business.
Every week, there are over 650 million users worldwide who access the App Store, the platform on which they publish their apps more than 36 million developers is that supports more than 195 local payment methods and 44 currencies. Precisely for this reason the App Store must be a secure platform, both for users and for developers and it is for this reason that Apple has introduced various measures over the years to continuously monitor and detect fraud.
During 2022, according to the report, the App Store prevented more than $2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions and rejected nearly 1.7 million apps that didn’t meet high privacy, security and content standards. Last year, Apple avoided about $1.5 billion in potential fraudulent transactions and blocked more than 1.6 million apps and updates.
As of 2021, Apple had closed more than 802,000 developer accounts for potentially fraudulent activity. In 2022, this number it dropped to 428,000 thanks also to the new methods implemented by the App Store to prevent its creation. In addition, nearly 105,000 Apple Developer Program enrollments were rejected for suspected fraudulent activity.
In 2022, Apple also protected users from nearly 57,000 untrusted apps from unauthorized stores, lacking the privacy and security protections offered by the App Store and only in the last 30 days, Apple has blocked nearly 3.9 million attempts to install or run apps illegally distributed through the Developer Enterprise Program.
These, in detail, the main statistics highlighted by Apple in its report:
- Apple has blocked $2.09 billion in fraudulent transactions on the App Store in 2022
- 428,000 developer accounts closedi for potentially fraudulent activities
- 105 million account registrations on the Apple Developer Program blocked for suspected fraudulent activity
- 282 million fraudulent customer accounts have been deactivated; 198 million fraudulent new account attempts were blocked before they could even be created
- Users have been protected by nearly 57,000 untrusted apps from illegitimate stores
- Almost 400,000 rejected app submissions for invasion of privacy
- Beyond 153,000 rejected app submissions for spam, cloning or misleading users
- Almost 29,000 app submissions rejected because they contain hidden features or undocumented
- Almost 1.7 million app submissions they were rejected by the App Store for various reasons, including fraud and privacy concerns
- Blocked the use of nearly 3.9 million credit cards stolen
- Forbidden to 714,000 accounts making new transactions
- Barred and removed over 147 million ratings and reviews who have not met the standards of moderation.
This Apple App Store security report comes at a time when Apple is under significant pressure to allow iPhone and iPad users to install apps also via “sideloading” or through third-party stores.
In this sense, the European Union has already approved the Digital Markets Act, a legislation that obliges online platforms to allow the free installation of apps, which should start to happen on the iPhone with the release of iOS 17 expected for the next fall. The United States has also been working on similar legislation for some time.
With this report, Apple also wanted to emphasize the importance of always having the security of using secure apps on your smartphone. The Cupertino company has always maintained that sideloading is the best friend of cybercriminals who could take advantage of this “openness” to make it easier for more naive users to install potentially malicious apps.
