ah, Kik. that thing from 2013. it used to be THE messaging platform. when you saw a girl in your school that you really liked, the first thing that you'd say to them would be "yo what's your kik?"
it was THE way to talk to your friends outside of school or meetups. one of the earliest geometry dash collaboration levels were made using it as a communications platform!
now, it has become Kink Messenger. a place for pedos to sexually exploit children. a place for assholes to take advantage of people that need a shoulder to lean on.
this was a time before snapchat streaks. before matrix existed. when Novell GroupWise was still a commonly used business messaging protocol (maybe?). when Pidgin was new and exciting.
Kik first started out at the University of Waterloo on Canada and was intended to be a music sharing app. it was released on October 19, 2010. just 15 days after it was re-released as a messaging app, it already had 1 million registrations, with Twitter being the catalyst of it. it allowed sharing photos, videos, sketches, mobile webpages etc.
it was supposed to be an "anonymous" messenger. it did not require a phone number or even a valid email address to sign up, although this wasn't enough to make it anonymous as it didn't use end-to-end encryption, still tracked users and logged IPs. these informations are, of course, given out to law enforcement if requested. it had HORRIBLE security, as it had scored only one out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. it recieved a point for encryption during transit but lost points bcause communications are not encrypted with a key to which the provider does not have access, users cannot verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen, the code is not open to independent review, the security design is not properly documented and there had not been a recent independent security audit.
recently, a YouTuber called tuv made a video called "The Horrors of Kik Messenger". in it, he made a fresh new Kik account with a fresh new e-mail address and saw what happened. within just 4 MINUTES of him making an account, he was getting dm'ed by tens of sex bots sending him links to scam erp games. he hadn't even opened the app yet. when he did, he saw a "live" section which was literally just porn. kik also has a "tags" function where you can mark and see chatrooms related to a topic. kik even has a list of pre-selected topics like naruto, k-pop, tiktok, etc. stuff that kids like yknow? but do not be fooled. when you click on ANY of these topics, you will get 18+ dating chatrooms. inappropiate chatrooms are not supposed to be allowed in these tags. so how do they bypass it? they do it by just adding some other random characters on top of the host word (e.g: #Narutowormgum). basically they're killing 2 birds with one stone. they still show up because the topic still includes naruto in it but the filter doesn't get triggered because it's technically not #Naruto, it's #Narutowormgum.
he even went to reddit to look up kik-related subreddits, many of which were nsfw. from the non-nsfw ones, he found a guy who have been using kik for a couple of years, a Kik veteran. he said that another tactic that these abusers use. they look up depression, lgbt or similar tags and abuse people there (i.e: taking advantage of people who need a shoulder to lean on.)
although they ban inappropiate topics like "child", "sex", etc. so they must be protecting the kids right? WRONG!
can we go back to that nsfw rooms topic rq? if you join any of those nsfw rooms, even more sex bots will start DM'ing you. this is kidschat.net all over again.
btw, if you don't know what kidschat.net is, nexpo made a good vid about it. go watch it.
ANYWAY, by now, you'd think that kik is an 18+ app right? NOPE!
look at the age ratings of the kik messenger app on both the app store and google play. the app store says it's 17+, but the google play store says it's 13 and up.
they even have a fucking parents guide, WHICH HAS BEEN DELETED.
of course, they have the blanket statement that you need to have permission from your parents to use Kik, but cmon. what kid is gonna ask their parents to let them install goddamn Kik? and even if they allow it, you have no way of proving it.
the best part? these kinds of groomers go under the radar because Kik is not a mainsteam app anymore. discord has a lot of groomers and doxxers too but since it's a mainsteam app they're more likely to get caught.
give me your honest answer. no seriously, literally email your answer to me. who is more likely to get caught? a groomer who uses Discord or a groomer who uses fucking Kik?
this quote from tuv's original video sums it all up perfectly.
"Moderation? What is that?"oh and btw, here is tuv's original video. a lot of this blog post was taken from there.
The Horrors Of Kik Messenger