Apple says the App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions and more in 2020
On its App Store, Apple shielded consumers from potentially fraudulent transactions worth more than $1.5 billion.
Last year, Apple shielded consumers on its App Store from more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent purchases, preventing the attempted theft of their money, details, and time, as well as keeping nearly a million risky new apps out of their hands, according to the company.
Nearly 1 million problematic new applications, as well as nearly 1 million software upgrades, were rejected or disabled in 2020 for a variety of reasons.
According to a statement released late Tuesday by Apple, about 95,000 applications were suspended from the App Store in 2020 for fraudulent violations, the majority of which were bait-and-switch schemes.
"When those applications are detected, they're denied or withdrawn from the store right away," Apple explained. "Developers are notified of a 14-day appeals period until their accounts are permanently terminated."
The Apple Product Review team helped over 180,000 new developers launch applications in 2020.
More than 48,000 apps were rejected for having secret or undocumented features, and more than 150,000 apps were rejected for being spam, copycats, or misleading users in any way, such as tricking them into making a purchase.
"Another reason apps are refused is that they request more user data than they need, or they mishandle the data they collect," the company added.
The Software Review team rejected over 215,000 applications for privacy violations in 2020. Apple agrees that privacy is a human right, and consumers prefer the App Store because of this pledge.
"Even with these strict review protections in place, issues still arise," Apple acknowledged, citing the App Store's 1.8 million apps.
To help ensure accuracy and maintain confidence, Apple said it uses a sophisticated framework that incorporates artificial intelligence, machine learning, and human review by expert teams to moderate these ratings and reviews.
Over 1 billion ratings and 100 million reviews have been processed by Apple since 2020, with over 250 million ratings and reviews being deleted for not meeting moderation requirements.
"Unfortunately, some developer accounts are developed solely for the purpose of defrauding others. If a developer commits an egregious or persistent infringement, they will be kicked out of the Apple Developer Program and their account will be terminated," the firm mentioned.
In 2020, Apple terminated 470,000 developer accounts and refused another 205,000 due to fraud issues, effectively stopping these bad actors from ever uploading an app to the App Store.
Apple discovered and banned nearly 110,000 unauthorized applications on pirate storefronts in the last year.
"Apple has blocked more than 3.2 million instances of apps distributed illicitly through the Apple Developer Enterprise Program in just the last month," the company said.
Due to fraudulent and abusive behavior, Apple deactivated 244 million customer accounts in 2020 alone. In addition, 424 million attempted account creations were denied due to trends that appeared to be fraudulent or abusive.
