$9 billion in fraud didn’t make it to your iPhone – Apple just showed the “receipts”

But Apple’s efforts go beyond just App Store accounts. It is also targeting pirate storefronts – those sketchy third-party sites pushing malware-laced or pirated apps. In 2024, Apple blocked over 10,000 of these rogue apps and just in the past month, stopped around 4.6 million attempts to install or launch apps outside the App Store or approved marketplaces.

Every app goes through heavy vetting

Before any app hits the App Store, it is screened by Apple’s App Review team, which checks around 150,000 submissions a week. Last year alone, they helped 220,000 developers launch their first app.

And they are not just skimming the surface – Apple reviewed over 7.7 million apps in 2024 and rejected 1.9 million that didn’t meet its standards. That includes privacy violations, hidden features, spam or attempts to copy other apps.

The review process also sniffs out more subtle tricks. Developers often try to sneak in dangerous features that only activate after approval or use bait-and-switch tactics to trick users.

Apple rejected over 43,000 apps for hidden features and 17,000 more for shady behavior like that. It also took down 37,000 fraudulent apps tied to suspicious developer networks and rejected over 320,000 apps for being spammy, deceptive or misleading.

Fake reviews and shady rankings? Apple’s watching

Apple’s also cracking down on discovery fraud – stuff like fake downloads, paid-for five-star reviews or ranking manipulation. In 2024, the company processed over 1.2 billion ratings and reviews and removed more than 143 million that were fake or fraudulent.

It also yanked over 7,400 apps from the App Store charts and nearly 9,500 more from search results. That means legit developers get a fairer shot at being discovered.

What about payment fraud?

Fraudulent payments and stolen credit cards are a big threat and Apple says it stopped more than $2 billion in scam transactions in 2024 alone. Its tools, like Apple Pay and StoreKit, are designed with security at the core. Apple Pay doesn’t even share your card number with developers and everything’s encrypted end-to-end. 

Last year, the company blocked 4.7 million stolen cards and banned over 1.6 million accounts from making purchases again.

Why does this report matter even more now?

While Apple usually releases this report in May, I think the timing this year couldn’t be better – for Apple, at least. Apple is still dealing with regulatory pressure – especially after the EU forced it to allow third-party app stores last year.

And in the US, Epic Games recently won a key legal battle, meaning Apple can’t block apps from linking to external payment options. Apple has been under fire for keeping everything locked inside the App Store and this report feels like its way of saying, “Hey, we know the rules are changing, but staying in our ecosystem is still the safest bet.”