The real reason why Telegram was taken down by Apple

Telegram was temporary pulled over concerns that it was being used to share child porn - Apple App Store

Secure messaging app Telegram was temporarily removed from the Apple App Store last week due to it being used to distribute child porn, an e-mail from Apple revealed. 

In a report by 9to5Mac, App Store manager Phil Schiller said Telegram was pulled off the store after Apple learned the app was serving illegal content, specifically child pornography to users.

"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," he said, in an e-mail. 

After verifying the existence of the illegal content the team took the app down from the store, alerted the developer, and notified the proper authorities, including NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children).

However, within hours of being pulled, Telegram returned to the App Store with fixes in place to prevent the illegal content from being served to users.

CEO Pavel Durov tweeted "Telegram is back in the AppStore after being absent there since midnight CET. Every day 500,000+ users download Telegram for Android and another ~100,000 download Telegram for iOS. Check out yesterday’s update for both platforms."