Last year, Apple removed around 1.7 million questionable and harmful apps from its App Store. The company was also able to prevent fraudulent transactions with a total value of more than 2 billion US dollars.
Apple has published a report on its prevention measures against cybercrime. According to the Californian company’s statement, the App Store team was able to avert transactions with a total value of over 2 billion US dollars in 2022 that were classified as potentially fraudulent and stopped almost 1.7 million app registrations.
As part of its ongoing commitment to combat fraudulent activity, the company also deleted 428,000 developer accounts due to suspected fraudulent activity, deactivated 282 million customer accounts deemed to be fraudulent and suspended 105,000 newly created developer accounts due to possible fraudulent activity.
Special challenges in data protection
Of the almost 1.7 million app applications rejected by Apple, 400,000 involved privacy violations. This includes, in particular, apps that attempt to collect users’ personal data without their knowledge or consent.
Furthermore, 153,000 were rejected because they deceived users and were replicas of apps that had already been submitted. Around 29,000 applications were refused inclusion in the App Store because they used undocumented or hidden functions.
“In several cases last year, the App Review team discovered apps that were equipped with malicious code and could steal users’ login data from third-party services. In other cases, the App Review team uncovered several apps that posed as harmless financial management platforms but were able to transform themselves into another app,” Apple reports. Around 24,000 such deceptive apps were blocked.
Apple added that the App Store’s ‘App Review’ team reviews an average of more than 100,000 app submissions each week, of which around 90 percent are reviewed within 24 hours.
Suspicious payments and manipulated ratings
By stopping fraudulent transactions totaling 2.09 billion dollars last year, Apple says it was able to prevent around 714,000 fraudulent accounts from making further transactions.
The company also blocked around 3.9 million stolen credit cards that were used for fraudulent purchases in the App Store. “Apple takes credit card fraud very seriously and remains committed to protecting the App Store and its users from such charges,” the company said.
Most recently, Apple removed more than 147 million fraudulent reviews from the App Store in 2022 after the company reviewed more than 1 billion reviews to identify fraudulent reviews.
According to Apple, the App Store has an average of over 650 million users worldwide every week and offers a global app distribution platform for more than 36 million registered developers.
Source: https://www.swisscybersecurity.net