Paid Version Of Offender Locator Pulled From App Store (UPDATED)
August 7, 2009
Offender Locator is a fairly high-profile app that allows users to locate registered sex offenders. It had been hovering right around the top five paid apps for quite some time, that is, until yesterday. According to CNet, the app has been abruptly yanked from the App Store for legal reasons.
Not so surprisingly, those exact legal reasons remain unclear, but some have speculated that it may be illegal to profit from the sale of publicly-available criminal information in the state of California. The only problem with that theory is that other competing sex offender locating apps, such as Sex Offenders Search and StaySafe, remain in the App Store.
As we speak, ThinAir is still trying to get in contact with Apple's legal team regarding the removal. ThinAir's lite version of Offender Locator remains in the App Store free of charge.
Because of the complete lack of information, it's hard to even form an opinion on this matter. It's probably best to wait this one out before jumping to any conclusions, which is obviously going to be very difficult considering Apple's track record with unfair app rejections and removals.
UPDATE: Many of our readers pointed out that the paid version of Offender Locator is back in the App Store, so we contacted the ThinAir regarding the removal and have yet to receive a response. However, CNNMoney.com's Apple 2.0 blog states that ThinAir simply removed California's data from the paid version of the app. We will update the post again if we get an official response.