Apple Newsroom, Wednesday:

In 2025, Apple prevented over $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions, adding to a total of more than $11.2 billion over the past six years. Apple also took a number of actions to block bad actors from distributing malicious software, rejecting over 2 million problematic app submissions last year alone.

The word “problematic” is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting. Apple wants us to mentally equate it with “fraudulent,” but it only means apps were rejected for “failing to adhere to the App Review Guidelines,” the application of which any developer will tell you is infuriatingly inconsistent.

Last year, Apple’s systems also successfully rejected 1.1 billion fraudulent customer account creations — blocking bad actors at the outset — and deactivated an additional 40.4 million customer accounts for fraud and abuse.

Among those 40.4 million deactivated customers are at least a handful who were erroneously flagged for fraud.

Apple loves its big numbers, and its execs will happily hawk them when it’s to their benefit. But what about the flip side? How about reporting the number of legitimate developers rejected for inane reasons? Should those rejections really be promoted as part of some great achievement? Apple’s proud of the “306,000 new developers” it’s welcomed to the platform, but how many saw their apps deplatformed? Apple brags about how many fraudulent apps get blocked; what about the egregious approvals?

Come to think of it, is Apple really patting itself on the back for finally taking down apps everyone but Apple knew were fraudulent from the jump? Is Apple counting those as both approvals and rejections? My mind boggles.

Apple’s Trust and Safety teams are doing legitimately good work to reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of fraud happening on and around the App Store, and I’m aware there’s no such thing as “perfect security” (or “perfect reviews”), but if Apple is going to take credit for the good, it should also take blame for the bad. Until Apple’s willing to do so, perhaps they could chill on these self-congratulatory press releases.