"Apple Blocked 1.6 Million Risky, Vulnerable Apps in 2021"

Last year, Apple says its App Store fraud prevention mechanisms stopped potentially fraudulent transactions totaling roughly $1.5 billion.  Apple noted that throughout 2021, they prevented more than 3.3 million stolen credit cards from making purchases in the App Store and banned nearly 600,000 accounts from ever transacting again.  The company also noted that in 2021 it rejected more than 1.6 million risky and vulnerable applications and app updates from the store, either for containing vulnerabilities that impeded functionality or for requiring various improvements.  Of over 835,000 problematic new apps, 34,000 were apps containing hidden or undocumented features, 157,000 were spam, copycat, or otherwise misleading apps, and over 340,000 were privacy-violating apps.  Furthermore, an additional 805,000 app updates were rejected or removed from the App Store as part of Apple’s App Review process.  In 2021 Apple helped more than 107,000 new developers publish applications in the App Store, terminated more than 802,000 fraudulent developer accounts, and prevented 153,000 developer enrollments over fraud concerns.  Customer accounts were also deactivated for engaging in fraudulent and abusive activity: a total of 170 million of them.  An additional 118 million account creation attempts were rejected due to suspicion of potential fraudulent and abusive activity.

SecurityWeek reports: "Apple Blocked 1.6 Million Risky, Vulnerable Apps in 2021"