Kik

Is Kik safe?

Not for children, and not very private for adults. We score Kik 34/100, one of the lowest scores among the messengers we rate, below Telegram (52) and close to NGL (38).

Kik's appeal was always its anonymity. You pick a username, and nobody needs your phone number to reach you. That made it a favourite with teenagers in the 2010s and, as criminal cases cited by child-safety groups show, with adults who wanted to reach them. Kik has tightened its rules since: new accounts must be 18 or over, and UK users must verify their age. But two US state attorneys general now say those changes came late and do not go far enough.

Why is Kik risky for children?

The design is the problem. Usernames are searchable, public groups gather strangers around shared interests, and Kik Live adds streaming with paid credits. Outside the UK, nobody checks the age you type in.

In September 2026 Connecticut's attorney general, William Tong, opened an investigation into MediaLab and described Kik as "a cesspool of sexual abuse, exploitation and bullying". His office says Kik "uses no technological tooling to monitor for underage users", relies on reviewing content after it is reported or found, and has never audited whether its age checks work. It also says MediaLab advertised Kik as suitable for over-13s as late as September 2024, and that Google Play still rated it "Teen" in February 2025.

Nevada's attorney general, Aaron Ford, sued Kik and MediaLab in August 2025 under the state's Deceptive Trade Practices Act, alleging that easy anonymous sign-up made the platform a haven for child predators and for sharing abuse material. The case is pending, and those are allegations, not findings.

The reporting figures show the scale. MediaLab/Kik sent 111,394 reports to NCMEC's CyberTipline in 2025, after 114,155 in 2024 and 17,394 in 2023. A rise in reports can mean better detection rather than more abuse, but it shows how much exploitation material moves through an app of Kik's size.

What data does Kik collect?

MediaLab's privacy policy covers Kik together with WorldStar, Amino and Genius. It says the company reviews "the text and/or image content" of chat messages and collects metadata showing who you talk to. It can take your address book, call log and SMS history to suggest people you may know.

Advertising is built in. Google Play's form says Kik shares your email address, device IDs and precise location with other companies for advertising or marketing, and Apple's label lists identifiers used to track you across other companies' apps and websites. The policy also says that when you enter your email on its websites, it may share it in hashed form with LiveRamp, which turns it into an identifier for cross-device ad targeting.

Connecticut found problems here too. In July 2025 its attorney general sent MediaLab a notice of violation under the state's data privacy law, citing sensitive data, including precise location, sexual orientation and health data, processed without proper consent. The office says MediaLab has only partly fixed those problems.

Is Kik encrypted?

Only in transit. Kik has no end-to-end encryptionEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary, and the privacy policy's statement that MediaLab reviews message content confirms it can read chats as they pass through. MediaLab's law enforcement guide says it does not keep the content of private or group chats after delivery, only time-stamped logs, so old messages exist only on the devices involved. When you log in on a new phone, your chat history does not come with you.

We found no two-step login option in Kik's help centre. Kik's page on HackerOne is an unclaimed directory listing that offers no rewards.

If you or your child use Kik

1. For a child or teenager: delete the account. Kik is for adults under its own terms.
2. Check a child's phone for Kik and for other anonymous apps, and ask who they talked to there.
3. Adults: do not post your Kik username publicly, and turn on the setting that filters messages from new people.
4. Report anyone who asks for photos, money or a move to another app, and use "report with chat history" so Kik's team sees the messages.
5. Turn off location access for the app.
6. Before deleting your account, make sure you can open the sign-up email, which Kik needs for permanent deletion.
7. For private chats with people you know, use Signal instead.

How we scored it

Scams and harmful content (18) is Kik's weakest factor: anonymous access, weak age checks and the volume of exploitation reports. Privacy (28) reflects message review, location shared for ads and Connecticut's findings. The regulatory record (60) counts Nevada's pending suit and Connecticut's open investigation; neither has produced a fine yet.