Fake reviews, fraud and manipulation in the App Store: Apple reveals figures
Apple's highly frequented App Store also attracts fraudsters on a grand scale. The company provides new figures on its anti-scam measures.
(Image: tre / Mac & i)
Apple promises to continue to take strong action against app scams. The App Store now has over 800 million visitors per week, as the company announced on Tuesday. The much-used platform therefore remains a popular target for fraudsters. "These threats range from fraudulent apps that aim to steal personal information to fraudulent payment systems that try to take advantage of users," Apple explained, promising a "comprehensive approach to fighting fraud".
Fraud in and outside of apps
The scams include account fraud, malicious apps, manipulated app charts and fake ratings as well as credit card fraud. According to Apple's figures, fraudulent user accounts that leave fake ratings or artificially inflate the download figures of apps in order to give them more visibility in the charts remain the main problem.
According to the report, the app store operator rejected the creation of "over 711 million customer accounts and deactivated almost 129 million customer accounts" in 2024 in order to prevent such malicious actions. Several thousand apps were removed from the App Store charts and apparently manipulated search results. Apple also classified around one in nine new reviews as fraudulent. A total of 143 million ratings and reviews were removed.
Of the 7.7 million apps and updates submitted for App Store review last year, Apple rejected more than 1.9 million, according to the statement. 146,000 developer accounts were "terminated due to suspected fraud". A further 139,000 new account registrations were rejected. Apple also removed 37,000 apps from the App Store "due to fraudulent activity".
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Apps are apparently moving away from Apple's payment systems
According to Apple, only 420,000 apps now use the manufacturer's payment systems (Apple Pay and StoreKit or in-app purchases). It remains unclear why this figure has halved compared to the previous year – Last year, Apple was still talking about "almost 1 million apps". Apple has reportedly blocked 4.7 million stolen credit card details in its own payment systems and "blocked 1.6 million accounts from further transactions". According to the company, this prevented "potentially fraudulent transactions" amounting to a good 2 billion US dollars. No further details on the figure were provided.
Apple also announced that it had blocked "over 10,000 illegal apps on pirate websites". In the past month alone, the company also prevented "nearly 4.6 million attempts to install or launch apps that were illegally distributed outside of the App Store or approved third-party marketplaces". However, no further details were published on this either.
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