Tumblr found to contain child porn during audit

During an audit, child pornography was found on blog platform Tumblr. The company itself has announced this. It is child pornography that had not been found online before. The find is the reason Apple removed the Tumblr app from the iOS App Store.

The child pornography has since been removed, the blogging platform said in a statement. The company won’t comment on what the material is or what happened to the users who posted it on Tumblr. The material was not in databases of organizations such as the US National Center for Missing and Abused Children, the company says.

The child porn came up during a regular audit of things that have appeared on Tumblr. Since it’s not in the child porn databases, it didn’t come up during regular scans. It is unclear whether this is an internal audit or one from an external company.

Apple has removed the Tumblr app from the App Store following the discovery. That happened around the weekend, but it was previously unclear what caused it. Now that the material has been removed, the iPhone maker will presumably allow Tumblr in its download store again. Tumblr belonged to Yahoo for several years and is now part of Oath.