It looks like you’ll have to find a new way to find out where your friendly neighborhood sex offenders are located. According to Techcrunch, Offender Locator, a top 10 iPhone application I wrote about last week has been removed from the App Store by Apple.
It’s not the only sex offender-locating app for the iPhone, but in this case it looks like its paid status violates California law because it basically sells personal information. That’s not a confirmed reason for the removal but it makes sense.
The removal can’t come at a more perfect time as it highlights the long-running problems with the App Store approval process; on the very day that Apple vice president Phil Schiller sent an email to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber explaining the reasoning behind the recent removal of a dictionary app that contained the odd dirty word.
Today marked the first occasion that the company has spoke publicly regarding how it approves (or removes) iPhone applications–definitely resulting in a good laugh on my part after I heard of the Offender Locator removal.
