©Kik Interactive
For those that don't want to bother reading a long article, I'll sum it up into one paragraph and then go into details afterward.
KIK is a messenger app that is wildly popular among teenagers and is probably the leading place for child pornography distribution. The leadership abandoned the app and hackers have basically taken it over to with custom versions, making it basically the wild west. The predators message and lure teens and children with spam bots. IF they even read the message, their IP address is logged by the psychopaths. Please check their phone and have them uninstall it immediately.
If you go to Google and type Kik, then move over to the news, you see pages and pages of articles related to this fact. Look at the timestamp.
95% of the news curated about the Kik app is related to child porn charges. it's insane.
"In May 2016, Kik Messenger announced that they had approximately 300 million registered users, and was used by approximately 40% of United States' teenagers. Kik Messenger was acquired by Medialab in October 2019" - Wikipedia
I couldn't find a demographic breakdown of 2020, but as of just a few years ago this was a wildly popular app used by teenagers.
The rest of my discovery of this app and it's insidious background was investigated by the darknet enthusiast Jack Rhysider. He can also be found on apple podcast and google podcast app. If you're someone that loves podcasts, I'd recommend you just listen to his account.
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/93/
Kik is a basic messaging app to share pictures and texts, but also has themed rooms, kind of like how facebook has different groups you can join. There are also region-based rooms, which is convenient for predators as well. These are easily searchable by tags, just like anywhere else. The app was marketed to teenagers with good intentions.
The original developers were never able to make money, until they launched their own cryptocurrency named Kin. This became so profitable, nearly $100 million from their coin offering straight to the developers, that they totally abandoned the app and put all their focus into crypto.
In 2019, the developer officially stated that it would no longer be supported by their team, reducing their staff to just 19 people to help market their cryptocurrency.
Medialab AI bought the company to try to turn it around to be profitable, as that's their business model. They're basically a no talent company with a lot of money, not to be confused with MediaLab (not AI) which is a medical company.
They started off by basically copying myspace's downfall and began plastering a ton of ads everywhere on the app. Then they assigned a skeleton crew to just keep it working, but with no oversight or moderation. It became rampant with legal porn groups, and then illegal porn.
Since it never got updated or moderated, hackers made custom versions of the app that allowed for massive spamming and tracking. They can also take over groups, kick out people, post their own stuff etc. So now, its basically a war zone of ethical hackers that try to take over the porn groups and shut them down vs. the infinitely motivated perverts who keep creating them.
Combine this with the news that Apple is now actively scanning phones for child porn and sending it to prosecutors, having the app installed may unintentionally download thumbnails of child porn onto your phone or your children's phone.
Insane isn't it?