Apple iCloud accused of failing to stop ‘child porn’ in West Virginia lawsuit

Published February 19, 2026 6:55pm ET



West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Apple, accusing the company of allowing its iCloud storage service to be used to distribute child sexual abuse material and failing to adopt stronger detection measures.

The complaint, filed in Mason County Circuit Court, alleges Apple prioritized user privacy over child safety by expanding end-to-end encryption and abandoning technologies that could have identified illegal images. McCuskey’s office called the case the first brought by a government agency targeting alleged distribution of such material on Apple’s cloud platform.

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