Apple shares big numbers about fraud on the App Store

Apple's App Store is massive, with over 850 million weekly users across 175 storefronts. That is possibly why it often remains on the radar of bad actors and fraudsters seeking to compromise users and businesses through malicious submissions, while evolving their methods and deceptive tactics.

Sharing App Store safety numbers for 2025, the iPhone-maker revealed that it prevented over $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions, bringing the total to $11.2 billion over the last six years. The company prevented the misuse of over 5.4 million stolen credit cards and banned nearly 2 million user accounts from future transactions.

Among the 9.1 million App Store submissions it reviewed last year, Apple rejected over 2 million problematic app submissions while trying to stop the distribution of malicious software through the App Store.

Addressing account fraud, Apple noted that bad actors have started deploying bot networks to create fake accounts, spam users, manipulate charts, and generate fake reviews. Its Trust and Safety teams stopped multiple large-scale attempts to create fraudulent accounts last year.

Apple rejected over 1.1 billion fraudulent customer account creations on the App Store and deactivated more than 40.4 million accounts for fraud and abuse. Taking action against malicious developers, Apple terminated 193,000 developer accounts over fraud concerns and rejected 138,000 enrollments. Stepping outside its ecosystem, Apple found and blocked 28,000 illegitimate apps on pirate storefronts.

Bad actors also remain active in the reviews section on the App Store, posting fake reviews to inflate ratings. Apple said it uses a combination of AI and human review to identify problematic reviews. Out of the 1.3 billion ratings and reviews it processed in 2025, Apple blocked almost 195 million ratings and reviews and prevented around 7,800 deceptive apps from appearing in search results.

All of these numbers give an idea of the massive scale at which platforms like the App Store and Google Play operate to keep apps and games safe for everyone. Still, in most cases, the fraudulent and malicious activity appears to increase each year, as shown by the App Store data Apple shared in 2025 and 2024.

In recent months, Apple has been after vibecoding apps because they supposedly change their own functionality or that of other apps. It also added a new subscription option on the App Store that developers can offer to their users. You can also check out the list of 36 apps and games that the company finalized for this year's Apple Design Awards.