Apple says it has prevented more than $9 billion in fraudulent transactions on the App Store over the last five years, with over $2 billion stopped in 2024 alone. The figure comes from Apple’s annual fraud prevention report, which outlines the company’s efforts to maintain security and trust across its app marketplace.
The App Store, which sees more than 813 million visitors weekly, relies on a combination of human oversight and automated systems to block malicious apps and activity. According to the report, Apple rejected or removed nearly 2 million app submissions in 2024 that failed to meet security, privacy, or content standards — including more than 1.9 million rejected during the initial review process and over 37,000 removed after being flagged for fraud post-approval.
Apple terminated over 146,000 developer accounts linked to fraudulent activity and blocked 139,000 new developer registrations deemed suspicious. On the user side, the company stopped the creation of 711 million customer accounts and deactivated nearly 129 million others for violating platform integrity — many of which were linked to spam, manipulated reviews, or artificial boosting of app rankings.
The report also highlights the company’s actions beyond the App Store itself. In 2024, Apple blocked more than 10,000 illegitimate apps hosted on third-party “pirate” storefronts, which often distribute cloned or modified versions of legitimate apps, sometimes containing malware. Additionally, Apple says it stopped approximately 4.6 million attempts to sideload unauthorized apps onto iOS devices.
As part of its App Review process, which handles roughly 150,000 submissions per week, Apple also rejected 43,000 apps for containing hidden or undocumented functionality, and over 320,000 for copying or misrepresenting existing apps. Privacy remains a central concern: 400,000 submissions were blocked for attempting to access user data without consent.
Apple also flagged and removed over 143 million fraudulent App Store ratings and reviews in 2024. The company further removed 7,400 apps from App Store charts and nearly 9,500 deceptive apps from appearing in search results — efforts aimed at preventing manipulation of discovery tools and ensuring fair visibility for legitimate developers.
On the payment side, Apple prevented more than $2 billion in fraudulent transactions in 2024. It also identified nearly 4.7 million stolen credit cards and banned over 1.6 million associated accounts from making future transactions. Apple’s payment ecosystem, which includes Apple Pay and StoreKit, was cited as a key factor in reducing fraud, given that it never exposes card numbers to developers and supports features like device-specific codes and end-to-end encryption.
These security measures are part of Apple’s broader strategy to ensure that the App Store remains a trusted environment for both developers and users. The company says its efforts are ongoing, as malicious actors continue to evolve their tactics. Apple encourages users to report suspicious activity and offers additional resources at support.apple.com.
