EU targets Apple, Google, Microsoft over online fraud controls

The European Union has taken upon itself the responsibility to hold Apple, Google, and Microsoft accountable in their effort to prevent the proliferation of online scams. According to reports, EU regulators have officially asked the three US tech companies to provide information about how they are fighting financial fraud.

EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said, “We see that more and more criminal actions are taking place online […] We have to make sure that online platforms really take all their efforts to detect and prevent that kind of illegal content.”

In the past few months, the Digital Services Act (DSA), a landmark law meant to police how tech giants work online and flag illegal material, has focused on protecting children, online shopping, and the integrity of elections. Virkkunen said the group’s new goal would be to fight financial scams.

Information requests to lead to official investigations

The EU regulators are set to evaluate how Apple and Google are handling fraudulent applications like fake banking apps in their respective app stores. 

Together, the two tech giants got rid of almost four million apps in 2024, which most users never even noticed. Android has a 72% share of the world mobile OS market, while iOS has a 27% share. The sheer number of takedowns shows how widespread the problem is, since billions of people use Google Play and the App Store daily.

Apple announced in early 2025 that it would be taking down 137,000 apps from its EU App Store to meet DSA rules. It’s only a small part of a bigger job to clean up the whole world.

According to reports, Google takes the lead in removing about 11,000 apps daily, mostly because they broke privacy and security rules. Its Transparency Report says that 55% of these removals were due to privacy and data security breaches, 16% were due to content that wasn’t allowed, 15% were due to bad data, and 9% were due to scams or fraud.

On the other hand, Apple had an average of 200 withdrawals per day, with 51% of those being due to old software and 46% being due to fraud.

In addition, Google and Microsoft’s search engines will be examined for fake search results. Booking Holdings, the global accommodation platform that owns Booking.com and other travel sites, and the only Europe-based company being scrutinized, will also be analyzed over how it handles fake accommodation listings. 

These information requests could launch official investigations into the four companies. Under the DSA, companies that fail to curb illegal content and disinformation can face penalties of up to 6% of their annual global turnover.

Tensions rise between the US and the EU 

According to the EU’s tech boss, online fraud costs the bloc more than €4bn every year. She said that financial scams could make people mentally ill, and that the development of AI had made it harder to spot these scams.

There has been an ongoing investigation into Meta’s Facebook and Instagram for possible breaches of the DSA. Also, Brussels is looking into Elon Musk’s X platform. However, Brussels is facing criticism over dragging its feet in the enforcement of its digital rule book into X. Brussels was expected to finalise its probe into the social media platform before the summer.

The move is expected to increase the tensions between the US and the EU over the EU’s digital rules. It could lead to a formal probe and possible fines for the companies. As reported by Cryptopolitan, President Donald Trump of the US has said that countries that “discriminate” against US companies will get higher tariffs.

Besides the US companies, Chinese companies such as Temu and Spain-based firms are also being examined by Brussels to assess their compliance with the DSA. 

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