Undoubtedly you’ve heard of Kik, a messaging app that’s taken over the teen world by storm since it started to gain a lot of traction back in 2012. This app may seem cool since tons of kids are using it, but honestly, it’s not.
Kik may seem nice on the outside, but enter the bowels of this wasteland and you’ll see it’s full of pedophiles, drug dealers, murderers, and a few chat bots. Not the greatest environment for teens.
It’s a quasi-anonymous app, as you’ll need a username, but other than that, there’s no way to identify you, and anyone can lie about who they pretend to be. This has opened the door to sexters looking to message anyone who is willing to, and frankly, sexting on Kik is a horrible idea.
For those of you considering downloading Kik and sexting random people, let’s go over Kik and all the reasons why you should avoid sexting on it; there’s only five, but it’s more than enough to convince you to ditch this app completely and take your sexting talents elsewhere.
1 Blackberry Banned It
RIM, the parent company of Blackberry, prides itself on providing ultra-secure devices for it’s consumers, and an app like Kik threatens user’s security, something that RIM would never mess with, which is why Kik was banned from the app store back in 2010.
Blackberry isn’t about to let it’s users send messages to complete randoms and potentially land in a sticky situation; it was originally thought that RIM removed Kik because it would compete with Blackberry Messenger, but in reality it was just that RIM doesn’t want it’s consumers to have to deal with pedophiles or anyone who would pose a threat. That was just about the most sound business move the company has made in years.
With dropping sales numbers, Blackberry didn’t want to give consumers any reason to think twice about their phone’s security.
2 Kids On Kik Have Been Blackmailed, Kidnapped and Murdered
Yup, for real. It’s no secret that teens love Kik, but it’s an app that poses a great threat to children.
Kik gives users the anonymity that other messaging apps don’t; when you sign up for Kik, all you need to do is enter in an email address and create a username. The signup process is that simple, and anyone can make up an email account and a username and totally lie about who they are; on Kik, anyone can be anyone.
That’s a huge loophole in an app that only teens use; adults will email or message coworkers via Slack, and those applications actually have some security measures, but for the app that teens, young people who are easily manipulated and tricked, no, there’s essentially no protection.
Any predator, pedophile, or other disturbed person can create a Kik account, take literally any photo off the internet, use it as their profile pic, and pretend to be someone they’re not. This security flaw has lead to kids being blackmailed into taking explicit photos of themselves, some have gotten kidnapped, and some children have been murdered by people they met on Kik.
You should never use Kik for sexting, but if you do, watch your back very closely, and if anyone threatens you in any way, block them and stop communicating with them before the situation gets out of your control.
3 Anyone Can Message You
When looking for people to message, Kik users will search usernames until they find someone they want to talk to, and that’s something you should be worried about. Instagram and Twitter allow you to make your profile private, ensuring people you don’t know can’t see anything you’ve done, which is a great security measure for people who want to share things with friends without any strangers stalking their profiles.
Kik doesn’t give it’s users that level of security though, but they sort of have a good reason why: Kik wants to connect the world, and if you can’t search for literally anyone on Kik, then the world won’t be connected. The only thing about that is that Kik users are predominantly kids, and kids shouldn’t be connected with the world; they’re freakin’ kids!
For those of you who are a bit older and want to find someone to sext with, you will find ample suitors on Kik, but it’s almost a guarantee that they are not who they say they are.
There are some sites around the web that list Kik usernames that you can sext with, and most are listed as female, but if any of them are actually female (or the female they say they are) I’d be shocked.
4 It’s Really Easy To Lie About Your Identity
As previously mentioned, Kik doesn’t really keep tabs on it’s users to ensure they are who they say they are, and whenever you message someone, you’re going to have to user your own cunning and guile to figure out if they’re lying or not, which can be tricky, considering you aren’t standing in front of each other.
If you’re going to go all in on Kik and try to sext with people, either you try to find real people, or you just hit someone up and pretend that they are who they claim to be. There are plenty of sites with lists of names you can sext with on Kik, but those are either fake names or names stolen off Kik and added to those lists without the user’s consent
If you’re on Kik for sexting, do it at your own risk, although you should avoid it altogether.
5 Kik Doesn’t Care That Much About Your Security
With the incredibly lax signup, it’s clear that Kik doesn’t want to put many barriers between you and using the app, but with all of the crimes being committed by Kik users and the number of kids who’s lives have been ruined or tarnished, you’d think they’d add in some extra steps to ensure people aren’t lying when they say they’re JimmyBasketball23.
The only control the user has over who sends them messages is the ability to block people and prevent new people from messaging them without their consent, but if you’re trying to sext on Kik, chances are you don’t have either option activated. Since you’re open and available to everyone, you could be at risk of getting into a situation where the other user is demanding more photos, and they threaten to put any of the pics you’ve already sent on the internet if you don’t send any more.
You could be chatting along, having as good a time as you can when sexting on kik, and all of a sudden the person gets really aggressive and starts to make threats, ones you could do without. Kik was intended to be this huge open network, but the creators of Kik forgot that there’s a great deal of bad people in the world with horrible, horrible intentions, and when you use an app like Kik, you’re easily susceptible to that kind of terror and manipulation.
Sexting can be really great, but when you do it on apps that connect you with strangers, it turns into something that would haunt your nightmares. Sexting on Kik is a horrible idea, and it’s one that countless people have come to regret; don’t be one of them.