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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1522076
As published in its fourth annual fraud prevention analysis released today, Apple found that in 2023, it rejected more than 1.7 million app submissions for failing to meet the App Store’s stringent standards for privacy, security, and content. In addition, Apple’s persistent efforts to stop and reduce fraud on the App Store resulted in the termination of nearly 374 million developer and customer accounts, and removal of close to 152 million ratings and reviews over fraud concerns. Account Fraud Apple has developed robust systems to root out fraudulent customer and developer accounts quickly and effectively to prevent such actors from defrauding users. In 2023, Apple terminated close to 118,000 developer accounts, a decrease from 428,000 terminations from the prior year, thanks to continued improvements to prevent the creation of potentially fraudulent accounts in the first place. In addition, more than 91,000 developer enrollments were rejected for fraud concerns and prevented from submitting problematic apps to the App Store. Harmful activity can also occur at the customer account level, and Apple takes a number of measures to protect users and developers from ill-intended parties. These accounts tend to be bots that are created for the purposes of spamming or manipulating ratings and reviews, charts, and search results, which threaten the integrity of the App Store and its users and developers. In 2023, Apple blocked over 153 million fraudulent customer account creations and deactivated nearly 374 million accounts for fraud and abuse. Apple’s commitment to trust and safety extends beyond the App Store, having detected and blocked more than 47,000 illegitimate apps on pirate storefronts from reaching users over the last 12 months. Blocking apps from pirate storefronts is also beneficial to developers, whose apps could be modified or used to disguise malicious software for distribution on these platforms. Additionally, in the last month, Apple stopped nearly 3.8 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed illicitly through the Developer Enterprise Program, which allows large organizations to deploy internal apps for use by employees.