According to Apple, it has prevented more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent App Store transactions in 2025, as the technology company tightened efforts against fake accounts, scam apps, stolen credit cards, and manipulated reviews across its digital marketplace.
The App Store now attracts more than 850 million weekly visitors across 175 storefronts globally, making it one of the world’s largest digital commerce platforms. Apple said bad actors continue to evolve their tactics, using bot networks, fake reviews, spam accounts, and cloned apps to deceive users and manipulate rankings.
In 2025, Apple blocked 1.1 billion attempts to create fraudulent customer accounts and deactivated another 40.4 million accounts linked to fraud and abuse. The company also terminated 193,000 developer accounts and rejected more than 138,000 developer enrollments over fraud concerns.
Apple said it rejected more than 2 million app submissions last year for violating App Store rules, including privacy breaches, spam, hidden features, and misleading content. The App Review team processed more than 9.1 million app submissions in 2025, supported by a combination of human reviewers and artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
The company removed nearly 59,000 apps involved in “bait-and-switch” schemes, where apps initially appeared harmless before being modified into tools for financial scams after approval. Apple also rejected more than 443,000 submissions tied to privacy violations and blocked over 371,000 apps that copied existing apps or attempted to mislead users.
Apple said AI tools are now heavily integrated into fraud detection and app moderation. These systems help identify suspicious behavior faster, analyze app similarities, and detect fake reviews and spam content at scale.
The company processed more than 1.3 billion ratings and reviews in 2025 and blocked nearly 195 million fraudulent reviews before they appeared on the App Store. Apple also prevented almost 7,800 deceptive apps from showing up in search results and blocked another 11,500 apps from appearing on top charts.
To combat payment fraud, Apple said it stopped more than 5.4 million stolen credit cards from being used for fraudulent purchases and banned nearly 2 million accounts from making transactions again. More than 680,000 apps now use Apple’s payment technologies, including Apple Pay and StoreKit.
Apple also increased protections for children and families. More than 5,000 apps were rejected from the Kids category for failing to meet stricter rules on advertising, privacy, and age-appropriate content. Features such as Screen Time, Ask to Buy, and content restrictions remain part of Apple’s family safety tools.
The company also blocked more than 28,000 illegal apps distributed through pirate storefronts, including malware, gambling apps, pornography apps, and pirated versions of legitimate software. In the last month alone, Apple prevented 2.9 million attempts to install apps distributed outside the App Store or approved marketplaces.