With the many users using mobile devices, there are lots of money to be made. But in many times, people just want to earn money through shortcuts.
Bad actors are always seeking ways to cut corners and scam people. And on Apple's ecosystem, that is not an exception.
While some certainly got away, Apple managed to prevent nearly $1.5 billion fraudulent App Store transactions back in 2021.
According to its report, the company also stopped more than 1.6 million risky and vulnerable apps and app updates from defrauding users.
The tech giant said this comes with a requirement of “continuous monitoring and vigilance” through numerous teams.
Other notable statistics include:
- The App Review team rejected more than 34,500 apps for containing hidden or undocumented features.
- 157,000 apps were rejected because they were found to be spam, copycats, or misleading to users.
- 343,000 apps were rejected for requesting more user data than necessary or mishandling data they already collected.
- Apple systematically detected and blocked over 94 million reviews and over 170 million ratings from publication for failing to meet moderation standards.
- An additional 610,000 reviews were also removed after publication based on customer concerns.
- Apple found and blocked over 63,500 illegitimate apps on pirate storefronts.
- More than 3.3 million stolen cards were prevented from being used to make potentially fraudulent purchases.
- More than 118 million attempted account creations were rejected in 2021 because they displayed patterns consistent with fraudulent and abusive activity.
"Bad actors continue to evolve their methods of online fraud, often making their schemes harder to recognize," the company said.
"That is why Apple has continued to refine its processes, create new ones, and engineer solutions to take on these threats."
Apple said that it managed to do all that, thanks to the combination of computer automation with manual human review, and uses proprietary tools to leverage machine learning, heuristics and App Store data.
As for App Review, the company also involves reviewing app submissions to make sure user data is handled appropriately.
Apple also said that its App Review team have helped more than 107,000 developers get their apps on the App Store in 2021, adding that 835,000 problematic new apps and 805,000 app updates were rejected or removed from the App Store for issues like bugs.
The company isn't going to stop going all out, saying that it has to continue to detecting fraudulent activity and accounts and prevent financial crimes in order to keep the App Store a "safe and trusted place for users to find and download apps."
While the work from Apple is a continuous and tedious job, users must always remain vigilant.
