Apple Gets Its Annual Fraud Prevention Headlines ⇥ apple.com
Apple issued a news release today touting the safety of the App Store, dutifully covered without context by outlets like 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, and MacRumors. This has become an annual tradition in trying to convince people — specifically, developers and regulators — of the wisdom of allowing native software to be distributed for iOS only through the App Store. Apple published similar stats in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, reflecting the company’s efforts in each preceding year. Each contains similar figures; for example:
In its new report, Apple says it “terminated more than 146,000 developer accounts over fraud concerns” in 2024, an increase from 118,000 in 2023, which itself was a decrease from 428,000 in 2022. Apple said the decrease between 2022 and 2023 was “thanks to continued improvements to prevent the creation of potentially fraudulent accounts in the first place”. Does the increase in 2024 reflect poorer initial anti-fraud controls, or an increase in fraud attempts? Is it possible to know either way?
Apple says it deactivated “nearly 129 million customer accounts” in 2024, a significant decrease from deactivating 374 million the year prior. However, it blocked 711 million account creations in 2024, which is several times greater than the 153 million blocked in the year before. Compared to 2022, it disabled 282 million accounts and prevented the creation of 198 million potentially fraudulent accounts. In 2021, the same numbers were 170 million and 118 million; in 2020, 244 million and 424 million. These numbers are all over the place.
A new statistic Apple is publishing this year is “illicit app distribution”. It says that, in the past month, it “stopped nearly 4.6 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed illicitly outside the App Store or approved third-party marketplaces”. These are not necessarily fraudulent, pirated, or otherwise untoward apps. This statistic is basically a reflection of the control maintained by Apple over iOS regardless of user intentions.
There are plenty of numbers just like these in Apple’s press release. They all look impressive in large part because just about any statistic would be at Apple’s scale. Apple is also undeniably using the App Store to act as a fraud reduction filter, with mixed results. I do not expect a 100% success rate, but I still do not know how much can be gleaned from context-free numbers.