App developer claims Apple sent his company porn to prove its app could be used to find naughty pics

A Florida developer says his company got a bit of a naughty surprise in a recent email from Apple.

In a blog post on Medium (warning: somewhat explicit content), Jacksonville-based developer Carl Smith said his company, Ngen Works, had submitted an app (he doesn’t disclose the name or features of the app) to Apple’s App Store for review.

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As part of that process, someone on Apple’s review team informed Ngen that the app could be used to search for porn, something that would violate the App Store’s terms of service.

The email came as part of an exchange over how to improve that app’s ability to let users flag inappropriate content, Smith wrote.

However, one email from the Apple team included an attachment, which simply was labeled: “Please see the attached screenshot for more information.” When an employee opened the attachment, it included a picture of a man touching his genitalia.

Smith said the email should have included a warning, or pixellated the photo so it wasn’t quite as graphic.

“Apple sent us pornography without trying to mask it and with no warning of what we were going to see,” Smith wrote. “This means they exposed employees of my company to things Apple themselves said was objectionable. How is this acceptable?”

Smith said he figures Apple’s top management wouldn’t endorse such an approach, and so he wrote the post in the hopes of alerting them to the issue and to get them to adopt a clear policy against sending such images.

“So please help me get the word to the upper echelon at Apple who would probably be as shocked as I am that they are sending porn to their customers,” he wrote. “There is a much better way to protect people from offensive material. It starts with not violating your own policy.”

We’ve reached out to Apple for a response and will update when the company responds.

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