Apple on Tuesday revealed its efforts to prevent fraudulent transactions through the App Store between 2020 and 2023. The Cupertino-based tech giant highlighted the rise of digital threats and the measures it has taken to protect users from falling prey to scams and phishing attacks. The company said it prevented a total of $7 billion (roughly Rs. 58,440 crore) in App Store transaction fraud during the period. It also blocked more than 14 million stolen credit cards and over 3.3 million accounts from being transacted again.
The company detailed Apple’s efforts in a press release, which said: “As digital threats have evolved in scope and complexity over the years, Apple has expanded its anti-fraud initiatives to respond to these challenges and help protect its users. Every day, teams across Apple monitor and investigate fraudulent activity in the App Store and use sophisticated tools and technologies to root out bad actors and help strengthen the App Store ecosystem.”
Sharing more data, the tech giant said it managed to prevent fraud worth $1.8 billion (roughly Rs. 15,030 crore) in 2023. Furthermore, it rejected more than 1.7 million app submissions from the App Store for failing to meet Apple’s privacy, security and content standards. It also closed the accounts of approximately 374 million developers and customers and removed nearly 152 million ratings and reviews due to suspected fraud.
Apple has also taken steps to prevent malicious activity that may occur at the user account level. Highlighting bot accounts created to spam or manipulate ratings and reviews on the App Store, the tech giant said it blocked the creation of more than 153 such fake accounts and deactivated another 374 million accounts.
Explaining the app review process, the company said that their team of 500 employees evaluates every single app worldwide before it appears in the App Store. This team reviews approximately 132,500 applications per week and reviewed approximately 6.9 million applications last year. The review team performs several checks and uses a combination of automated processes and human review to detect potentially harmful and fraudulent applications.
