Apple reports $2.2bn App Store fraud

Apple said on May 20 that its App Store systems stopped more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2025, the latest annual disclosure the company uses to show how much policing sits behind its software marketplace. The company said the total blocked over the past six years now exceeds $11.2 billion. (apple.com) Apple also said it rejected more than 2 million problematic app submissions last year and blocked more than 1.1 billion fraudulent customer account creations. The figures arrive as Apple is under pressure to justify how tightly it controls app distribution and payments. Apple has published similar annual fraud tallies for several years, and its 2025 release follows a 2024 report that cited more than $2 billion in blocked fraudulent transactions and 1.9 million rejected submissions. (apple.com) ### Where does the $2.2 billion number come from? Apple said the $2.2 billion covers “potentially fraudulent transactions” it prevented in 2025 across the App Store. The company did not describe the number as confirmed theft; it described it as activity flagged and stopped by its review and fraud systems. (apple.com) Apple said those defenses combine human review with machine learning. In the same update, the company said the App Store now serves more than 850 million weekly visitors across 175 storefronts, which it presented as the scale at which those controls operate. ### How much of the fight is about accounts before apps ever appear? (apple.com) Apple said account abuse remains one of the largest fronts in the system. In 2025, it said, its systems rejected 1.1 billion fraudulent customer account creations and deactivated another 40.4 million customer accounts for fraud and abuse. The company also said it terminated 193,000 developer accounts over fraud concerns and rejected more than 138,000 developer enrollments. (apple.com) Those figures show Apple’s screening starts before an app is approved and extends to the identities behind storefront submissions. ### What happened at the app-review layer itself? (apple.com) Apple said it rejected more than 2 million problematic app submissions in 2025. The company tied those rejections to security, fraud and other policy failures, though its public post did not provide a full category-by-category breakdown in the excerpt available on its newsroom page. (apple.com) Apple also said it detected and blocked 28,000 illegitimate apps on pirate storefronts in 2025, including malware, pornography apps, gambling apps and pirated copies of legitimate software. In the last month alone, Apple said, it prevented 2.9 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed outside the App Store or approved alternative marketplaces. (apple.com) ### Does Apple present this as a one-year spike or a continuing pattern? Apple’s prior annual report, published in May 2025, said the App Store had prevented more than $9 billion in fraudulent transactions over five years, including more than $2 billion in 2024. That earlier report also said Apple reviewed more than 7.7 million submissions in 2024 and rejected more than 1.9 million of them. (apple.com) The comparison shows Apple’s 2025 disclosure is part of a recurring series of public fraud-accounting updates rather than a one-off announcement. MacRumors noted last year that Apple had issued similar App Store fraud analyses in late May or early June for five consecutive years. ### Why is Apple publishing these numbers now? (apple.com) Apple’s May 20 post lands as the company continues to defend the value of a curated App Store in disputes over payments and distribution. The company’s own framing was direct: the protections are meant to prevent harm to users while helping developers compete in what it called a trusted marketplace. Apple’s next public checkpoint on App Store policy is likely to come through its ongoing legal and regulatory fights, while its next fraud tally, if it follows the same pattern, would be expected around May or June 2027. (macrumors.com) (apple.com)