What makes Kik so popular amongst those sharing illegal content is spelled out by officers in court documents.
He’s not made a plea and has been ordered to undergo a mental health assessment to determine competency for standing trial. The defendant in that case, Michael Stanley Clark of Louisiana, is facing charges of production and dissemination of child pornography. He then sent sexually explicit images of an unnamed child, the document read. In October last year, a Kik profile with the name bossiercopssuck told an undercover agent he had nude images of his infant daughter taken while changing her diaper, a search warrant revealed. One of the parties later offered a non-nude picture of his own son to an undercover officer, though claimed he hadn't "tried anything" with the boy, according to police. In one exchange between two suspects, as described in a court document filed by the government, they discussed adopting a baby and the possibility of having sex with the infant. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this year.ĭiscussion and depiction of incest and rape feature prominently in child abuse cases reviewed by Forbes.
He used Kik on an iPhone to distribute those photos to approximately 25 other Kik users, some of whom he talked with about what to do to the infant. Take the case of William Steinhaus, who pled guilty in late 2016 to taking sexually explicit pictures of himself with a two-year-old who was occasionally in his custody. That case was one of many horrific crimes partly facilitated through Kik, according to court filings reviewed by Forbes. Despite the financial success of the company, and Kik's own efforts to curb the problem, this investigation has proven worrying problems remain. It's also received $120 million in funding since its 2009 founding in Canada and is now valued at more than $1 billion. Of its 15 million monthly active users, 57% are in the 13-24 age bracket. Though many previous reports have recounted individual exploitation crimes facilitated over Kik, many parents may not have heard of Kik. And we found that Kik hasn't even been deleting the profiles of individuals charged and convicted of child abuse offenses.
Posing as 14-year-old girls, we also discovered just how quickly predators were on the prowl and how third-party apps for sharing profiles appeared to be facilitating access to minors. A joint Forbes and Point Report investigation has uncovered evidence of a vast number of child exploitation cases involving the use of Kik, where some of the most appalling material is being shared and young girls and boys are being targeted for grooming. This astonishing level of illegal content might appear unique, but in recent years this kind of activity has become rampant across Kik.
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