Newsletter 3.22-2 article
WHAT'S KIK, AND HOW IS IT TIED TO RECENT CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ARRESTS?
Kik is a Canadian messaging app created by University of Waterloo students in 2009, according to its website. It is also a platform that has gained attention for its links to child pornography arrests.
There’s the case from December 2021 of a former leader of the Salvation Army in the Black Hills, who was collecting child porn on the app for years.
There’s also the case from November 2021 of a Lake County, South Dakota, man who was arrested for sexual contact with a minor and 11 counts of child pornography stemming from an investigation that began with a tip regarding his Kik account, where he had videos of child porn.
Similar cases can be found out of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Florida (even in the disarmingly named Niceville) and West Virginia. Just recently, we have seen two now-former police officers arrested and charged with child pornography, as a result of two separate investigations.
So what is this app that seems to be a preferred mode of communication between child predators?
On the surface, the app is just a simple, free messaging service like many others. In the company’s own words, the app “lets you connect with friends, groups and the world around you through chat. Just ask, ‘What’s your Kik?’”
One defining feature of the app is the accessibility. All you need to sign up is an email address. Once you submit your email, you’ll make a username, which acts as a sort of ‘phone number’ for your account and cannot be changed, and a display name, which is customizable.
In order to message someone on Kik, you must have their username. When it comes to sharing your username with others, the app allows you to share your ‘Kik code’ on social media.
Another component of the app is the group chat feature, where many cases of child pornography have been documented. One example of this can be found in the case of a predator named Daxton Hansen.
According to reporting from Forbes, investigators took over Hanson’s social media accounts, using them to delve further into the community of child pornographers and pedophiles he was a part of. “Hansen created multiple Kik groups for the trade of child abuse material and banned those who weren’t contributing, according to the search warrant,” Forbes wrote in 2019.