Fraud has been a growing concern for app developers and marketers alike over the coming year.
It affects users and customers but also wastes ad dollars in the long term.
Apple has taken several measures to extend its efforts to combat fraud and minimise these risks.
In a recent blog post, the company said it prevented $1.5 billion in fraudulent transactions last year by combining its technologies and human expertise.
Fraud attempts on the App Store include money and information theft. Apple has long been committed to getting rid of vulnerable apps.
In 2020, the company assisted some 180,000 developers to launch their apps on the App Store.
Some one million problematic new apps and app updates were rejected by the company in line with its guidelines on privacy, security, and spam.
The App Review team also rejected over 48,000 apps in 2020 for hidden features and over 150,000 apps because they contained spam or were otherwise misleading to end users.
Bait and switch apps tend to be removed immediately and app developers are given just 14 days to hand in an appeal. Last year, Apple removed 95,000 such apps.
Other reasons for rejecting apps included those asking users for more data than allowed by Apple’s regulations. Some 215,000 apps were deleted on these grounds.
Developer account fraud is another growing concern and Apple terminated some 470,000 developer accounts and rejected another 205,000 on account of fraud concerns.
When it comes to financial fraud, Apple has been extending its security features and prevented over 3 million stolen cards from being used to purchase stolen goods and services. It banned another 1 million accounts for transactions.
All of it sounds rather harsh, but Apple says that the aggressive monitoring is ensuring only legitimate apps are downloaded by end users. Where a user spots something that’s in violation of Apple’s terms, they can report the app.
