Fraud transactions blocked on Apple’s App Store worth $1.5 billion, stopped more than 1.6 million risky apps by 2021

On Wednesday, Apple acknowledged the App Store’s strict policies saying it blocked potentially fraudulent transactions worth about $1.5 billion (about Rs 11,021) last year. The Cupertino giant announced that it has removed more than 1.6 million risky and vulnerable apps and app updates from defrauding users. In 2021, with the App Review process, apps from over 107,000 new developers hit the store. Apple rejected 34,000 apps for privacy violations, while 157,000 apps were rejected for being described as copying or misleading users into making in-app purchases. The company’s new announcement comes at a time when the iPhone maker is facing intense scrutiny globally over its tight measures on the App Store.

In one New Posts on its newsroom website, Apple detailing the efforts made by App Store throughout 2021 to prevent potentially fraudulent transactions on the platform. According to the report, Apple has blocked about $1.5 billion worth of fraudulent transactions (about Rs 11,021) on the App Store and blocked more than 1.6 million risky and vulnerable apps and app updates. defrauding users throughout the last year. The company claims that it uses a variety of measures, including an App Review process that leverages machine learning, and heuristics to detect and prevent fraudulent practices.

Apple’s multi-layered App Review process is used to extract insights into potential app issues and violations. Following this process, every app and update is cross-checked to ensure that they follow App Store guidelines regarding privacy, security, and spam. Apple claims that more than 107,000 new developers put their apps on the store with App Review last year. Additionally, 835,000 apps and 805,000 app updates found to be problematic were banned. Banned app developers can file an appeal with the App Review Board.

More than 157,000 apps were rejected for copying, misleading users, or enticing them to make in-app purchases. Similarly, during the same time period, Apple’s App Review team paused more than 34,500 apps for including hidden or undocumented features.

“Sometimes, nefarious developers try to bypass App Review by making an app appear one-way, only to change its concept or functionality once it’s been approved,” Apple said. . . Apple says it rejected more than 343,000 apps last year because it asked for more user data than necessary or mishandled the data it had collected.

Apple also revealed some metrics regarding App Store reviews and ratings. The company says it processed more than 1 billion ratings and reviews by 2021, and blocked more than 94 million reviews and over 170 million ratings from publication. About 610,000 reviews were taken down following publication about customer concerns.

Furthermore, it noted that it terminated more than 802,000 developer accounts in 2021 over fraud concerns, and also denied more than 153,000 developer registrations.

Apple found and blocked more than 63,500 illegal apps on the pirate storefront. Over 170 million customer accounts involved in fraudulent and abusive activity were disabled during this time. Additionally, more than 118 million account creation attempts were rejected in 2021 because they displayed patterns consistent with fraudulent and abusive activity.

The tech giant has banned more than 3.3 million stolen tokens used to make potentially fraudulent purchases on the platform and blocked nearly 600,000 trading accounts back.