We Now Know Why Apple Pulled the Telegram Messenger App
Last week, Apple abruptly pulled the popular Telegram Messenger app from the App Store. We now know why and it isn’t pretty.
In an email shared by a 9to5Mac reader, Apple’s Phil Schiller explained the app was serving child pornography to users. The now verified email explains:
The Telegram apps were taken down off the App Store because the App Store team was alerted to illegal content, specifically child pornography, in the apps. After verifying the existence of the illegal content the team took the apps down from the store, alerted the developer, and notified the proper authorities, including the NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children).
The Telegram Messenger app returned to the App Store hours after it was pulled. The secure messaging app now includes fixes to prevent the illegal content from being served to users.
The entire email reads as follows:
The Telegram apps were taken down off the App Store because the App Store team was alerted to illegal content, specifically child pornography, in the apps. After verifying the existence of the illegal content the team took the apps down from the store, alerted the developer, and notified the proper authorities, including the NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children).
The App Store team worked with the developer to have them remove this illegal content from the apps and ban the users who posted this horrible content. Only after it was verified that the developer had taken these actions and put in place more controls to keep this illegal activity from happening again were these apps reinstated on the App Store.
We will never allow illegal content to be distributed by apps in the App Store and we will take swift action whenever we learn of such activity. Most of all, we have zero tolerance for any activity that puts children at risk – child pornography is at the top of the list of what must never occur. It is evil, illegal, and immoral.
I hope you appreciate the importance of our actions to not distribute apps on the App Store while they contain illegal content and to take swift action against anyone and any app involved in content that puts children at risk.
You can download the free Telegram Messenger app from the App Store.
