Apple announced the completion of blocking fraudulent transactions totaling $11.2 billion over six years and stated that it will further strengthen its protection.

Apple Strengthens App Store Protection in 2025

What Happened
This looks like a block of fraudulent accounts and applications. In 2025, Apple disabled 40.4 million user accounts due to fraud and abuse. For developers, 193 thousand accounts were blocked, and more than 138,000 registration requests were rejected.

App Scanning
Over the year, Apple discovered and removed 28 thousand illegal programs from pirate stores: malicious packages, pornographic apps, gambling games, and copies of official App Store apps. In the last month alone, 2.9 million attempts to install or launch such apps outside the official channel were prevented.

Review Submission Checks
The moderation team reviewed over 9.1 million submissions and approved 306 thousand new developers. At the same time, more than 2 million applications (1.2 million new apps + nearly 800 thousand updates) were rejected for non‑compliance with App Store requirements.

Moderation of Reviews and Ratings
In 2025, Apple processed over 1.3 billion user ratings and comments. Using proactive tools, about 195 million fraudulent ratings were identified and blocked. Additionally, almost 8,000 apps in App Store search results and another 11,500 in charts were removed for violating rules.

Payment Protection
More than 680 thousand apps use Apple Pay technology for secure purchases. Over the year, the company prevented fraudulent transactions totaling over $2.2 billion, blocked 5.4 million stolen credit cards, and revoked payment access from nearly 2 million accounts.

Child Safeguards
In the “Kids” category, Apple rejected more than 5,000 apps that violated strict age restrictions and in‑app advertising rules.

How the Protection System Works
1. Combination of Human and AI

- Moderators use machine learning to detect suspicious patterns: fake reviews, inflated ratings, hidden malicious code.
- Algorithms analyze similarity between apps and updates to spot potentially dangerous changes.

2. TestFlight

- Developers can publish pre‑release versions via TestFlight. Apple checks these builds for security before they become available to testers.
- In 2025, more than 2.5 million TestFlight submissions were blocked due to fraud or security issues.

3. Proactive Detection

- The system continuously scans the App Store and external sources for new threats.
- When suspicious activity is detected, Apple immediately blocks accounts, apps, and payment operations.

2025 Year Summary
- Over 2 million problematic submissions rejected.
- 1.1 billion fraudulent account attempts blocked.
- $2.2 billion of potentially fraudulent transactions prevented this year and over $11.2 billion in the last six years.

Apple continues to scale its review process so every new release meets high standards of privacy, security, and quality. This builds user trust in the App Store and protects business partners from growing digital threats.