In a press release on its Newsroom site, Apple says the App Store stopped nearly US$1.5 billion in fraudulent transactions and stopped over 1.6 million risky and vulnerable apps and app updates from defrauding users in 2021.
Key points from Apple’s announcement:
° When developer accounts are used for fraudulent purposes in a deceitful or especially egregious fashion, the offending developer’s Apple Developer Program account is terminated.
° As a result of these efforts, Apple terminated over 802,000 developer accounts in 2021. An additional 153,000 developer enrollments were rejected over fraud concerns, preventing these bad actors from submitting an app to the store.
° In an effort to protect users who download apps beyond the safe and trusted App Store, over the last 12 months, Apple found and blocked over 63,500 illegitimate apps on pirate storefronts.
° Over the past month alone, Apple has blocked more than 3.3 million instances of apps distributed illicitly through its Enterprise Developer Program, which is designed to enable large organizations to develop and privately distribute their own apps for internal use. Offenders have sought to exploit this program in an attempt to flout App Review or involve a legitimate enterprise by compromising an insider to leak credentials needed to ship illicit content.
° Apple takes action on fraudulent customers accounts, too. In 2021, Apple deactivated over 170 million customer accounts associated with fraudulent and abusive activity. If an account exhibits similar behaviors to those that have engaged in previous abuse, they’re deactivated before they can be used at all. In addition, more than 118 million attempted account creations were rejected in 2021 because they displayed patterns consistent with fraudulent and abusive activity.
