Apple has prevented over $9 billion in fraudulent transactions in its App Store over the past five years, including over $2 billion in 2024, according to the tech giant.

The App Store is available in 175 regions across the world and has around 813 million visitors a week.

Apple said that preserving the App Store’s safe and secure marketplace requires constant vigilance, as bad actors continue to evolve their tactics in an attempt to defraud users.

These threats range from deceptive apps designed to steal personal information, to fraudulent payment schemes that attempt to exploit users.

Apple said in 2024 it terminated more than 146,000 developer accounts over fraud concerns and rejected an additional 139,000 developer enrolments to prevent bad actors from submitting their apps to the platform.

The company also rejected over 711 million customer account creations and deactivated nearly 129 million customer accounts last year, preventing risky and malicious accounts from carrying out harmful activity.

This includes spamming or manipulating ratings and reviews and search results that risk compromising the integrity of the App Store.

The company said it is also working to prevent risky software distributed by pirate storefronts from reaching users.

In 2024, Apple detected and blocked over 10,000 illegitimate apps on pirate storefronts, which it said include malware, pornography apps, gambling apps, and pirated versions of legitimate apps from the App Store.

By restricting these storefronts, Apple said it also protects developers from having their apps cloned, altered, or weaponised for spreading malicious software.

Over the past month, Apple said it stopped nearly 4.6 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed illicitly outside the App Store or approved third-party marketplaces.

Elsewhere, Apple said that it takes credit card fraud “extremely seriously” and remains committed to protecting users. This includes ensuring that credit and debit card numbers are never shared with developers, which eliminates another risk factor in the payment transaction process.

Apple said it identified nearly 4.7 million stolen credit cards last year and banned over 1.6 million accounts from transacting again.

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