Apple lifts two-month ban on iOS Telegram updates

In April, Russia imposed an official ban on the messaging app, Telegram. Russia ordered Apple to remove the app from the App Store, and since the order, Telegram updates on iOS were banned worldwide. Now finally, two months later, that ban has been lifted.

Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, revealed details about the ban via a tweet on the 31^st of May. The lack of updates meant that many features were not working, particularly for iOS 11.4 users.

Apple stopped approving Telegram for iOS updates globally 1,5 months ago after Russia ordered a block on Telegram. More here – https://t.co/yarcIrV2Bh

— Pavel Durov (@durov) May 31, 2018

Naked Security reports in addition to this, the ban on updates meant that Telegram missed the deadline to comply with GDPR guidelines. On the 1^st of June, after lots of pressure from the press, Apple ended their ban on iOS updates for Telegram.

Russia’s ban on Telegram came after a suicide bombing in the St. Petersburg metro killed 16 people. In the wake of the attack, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) demanded a way to decrypt messages sent via the service. The ban took just 18 minutes to be made official by the court.

KitGuru Says: Apple really hasn’t handled this situation well. The global restriction on updates for Telegram was completely unneeded, but it isn’t the first time Apple kowtowed under any sort of pressure. What do you think of how Apple conducted themselves with Telegram?

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