Its main appeal is privacy and anonymity: The app is free, and allows people to find strangers and communicate with them anonymously, through a user name.
#ANONYMOUS GAY CHAT ONLINE FREE#
“The Kik app has become so popular, it’s probably the one where law enforcement has seen the most activity,” said Leslie Rutledge, the Arkansas attorney general, who issued a public plea last year to parents in her state to educate themselves about their children’s online habits after two Arkansas men used Kik to solicit nude photos from under-age girls - and an undercover investigator.įounded in 2009 and based in Canada, Kik aspires to become the Western version of WeChat, the hugely successful messaging service in China that offers free texting, e-commerce and content delivery. ■A Colorado man charged with taking a 13-year-old Connecticut girl to a hotel and sexually assaulting her, after chatting and arranging the meeting on Kik. ■ An Alabama man charged with statutory rape and the attempted kidnapping of a 14-year-old girl he contacted on Kik.
And experts in Internet crime caution that the app is just one of many digital platforms abused by all manner of criminals, from small-time drug dealers to terrorists. for information that helped lead to the arrests of the students, David Eisenhauer, 18, and Natalie Marie Keepers, 19, both aspiring engineers from Maryland. Its officials say they responded to “multiple emergency requests” from the F.B.I. Neighbors say that the day before she died, Nicole showed them Kik messages she had exchanged with an 18-year-old man she was to meet that night. The death of Nicole Madison Lovell, a liver transplant and cancer survivor from Blacksburg, Va., has put Kik - widely used by American teenagers but not as well known to adults as Snapchat or Instagram - in the spotlight at a time when law enforcement officials say it has been linked to a growing number of abuse cases. The allegations are beyond chilling: two Virginia Tech freshmen charged with the premeditated kidnapping and killing of a 13-year-old girl who, authorities say, communicated with her murderer online.īut the way they chatted - on a wildly popular messaging app called Kik - has increasingly become a source of concern for law enforcement.