Apple App Store stopped about $1.5 billion-worth fraudulent transactions in 2021

Apple had announced last year that in 2020 it had been able to protect customers from more than $1.5 billion in fraudulent transactions on the App Store and had managed to keep almost a million problematic new apps off the store and away from users. In 2021, these numbers have just gone up.

In an annual update to the analysis Apple had shared last year, the company has announced that $1.5 billion-worth fraudulent transactions have been stopped on the App Store and more than 1.6 million risky and vulnerable apps and app updates have also been stopped on the platform.

The company pointed out features like App Review, Discovery Fraud, etc, along with ‘continuous monitoring’ and ‘vigilance across multiple teams’, as what has helped Apple prevent and reduce fraud on the App Store.

This year’s announcement revealed that in 2021 Apple’s App Store’s App Review has helped over 107,000 new developers get their apps onto the store, while over 835,000 problematic new apps and 805,000 app updates were rejected or removed for a range of reasons. Apple pointed out that its App Review process “can be iterative, since sometimes apps may be unfinished or contain bugs that impede functionality when they are first submitted for approval, or they might need to make improvements in its moderation mechanisms for user-generated content”. So, if any developer feels that they have been “incorrectly flagged for fraud”, they can file an appeal to the App Review board.

Some of the apps and updates to apps were rejected for “flagrant violations that could harm users or deeply diminish their experience” and Apple said that In 2021, the App Review team has “rejected more than 34,500 apps for containing hidden or undocumented features, and upward of 157,000 apps were rejected because they were found to be spam, copycats, or misleading to users, such as manipulating them into making a purchase”.

Additionally, there are some developers who try to “circumvent App Review by creating an app that appears one way, only to alter its concept or functionality once it’s been approved”, Apple pointed out adding that “when Apple finds instances of this sort of fraud, App Review rejects or removes such apps from the store immediately, and the impacted developers receive a 14-day appeals process notice prior to termination”. In 2021, over 155,000 apps were removed from the App Store for these kinds of violations, Apple announced.

Keeping the focus on user privacy, the App Review team also rejected over 343,000 apps for “requesting more user data than necessary or mishandling data they already collected”.

Apple also mentioned the issue of illegitimate ratings and reviews on the App Store that can affect user decisions to download or buy an untrustworthy app and said that it has processed more than 1 billion ratings and reviews through 2021 and “systematically detected and blocked over 94 million reviews and over 170 million ratings from publication for failing to meet moderation standards”. About 610,000 reviews were also removed “based on customer concern submissions and additional human evaluation”.

Apple said that over 802,000 developer accounts have been terminated in 2021for being used for “fraudulent purposes in a deceitful or especially egregious fashion”, and about “153,000 developer enrollments were rejected over fraud concerns, preventing these bad actors from submitting an app to the store”.

Some Apple users also download apps from other app stores and to protect these users, over the last year, Apple has “found and blocked over 63,500 illegitimate apps on pirate storefronts”. “These storefronts distribute malicious software often designed to resemble popular apps — or that modify popular apps without their developers’ authorisation — while circumventing the App Store’s security protections,” the company explained.

Developers are not the only ones Apple scrutinises though. In 2021, Apple says that it has deactivated over 170 million customer accounts associated with fraudulent and abusive activity and more than 118 million attempted account creations were rejected “because they displayed patterns consistent with fraudulent and abusive activity”.

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