How anonymous messaging app Kik is a law enforcement nightmare and may have been used by Virginia Tech student to ‘lure girl, 13, to her death’

Kik is a smartphone messenger app that allows users anonymity 

Kik was founded in 2009 by a group University of Waterloo students who decided to build a company that would shift the center of computing from the PC to the smartphone.

Unlike other messenger apps that require a working phone number, like Whatsapp, Kik uses usernames as the basis for accounts.

This, according to the app's website, is so 'users are always in complete control of who they talk to on Kik.' This grants Kik users - more than 240million - anonymity. It allows to users to search for people by username and exchange pictures and videos.

Ted Livingston, the start-up’s founder and chief executive, has said the service, reaches roughly 40 per cent of Americans aged 13 to 25. 

The free app uses native advertising - including video advertisements - to earn revenue. To target its primarily young audience, it also offers advertisers the chance to reach consumers using branded GIFs.

The app's guidelines says users must enter their birthdate and be 13 years of age or older in order to register a Kik account. 

However, in a guide for law enforcement, Kik says names, emails and ages do not allow the company to find user accounts - the exact username is required. They will, however, preserve data for a period of 90 days, pending receipt of a valid order from law enforcement.

Data that may be available include basic subscriber information, such and names and email addresses, link to a current profile picture, device related information, birthdate and user location information, such as the most recently used IP address. 

However, the company does not have access to content or 'historical user data' - such as conversations and photographs.

'Photographs and videos are not accessible to our Law Enforcement Operations team, and are automatically deleted within a short period after they are sent,' the guidelines say.

'We don’t have access to the text of Kik conversations. For some versions of Kik, conversations are ONLY stored on the phones of the Kik users involved in the conversation. 

'For other versions of Kik (which allows users to access their message history after logging out and then back in to their Kik account), the text of recent conversations is temporarily stored by us in a format that we can’t read.'

A Michigan teenager is facing child pornography charges for allegedly selling nude pictures and videos of herself online.

The 15-year-old told authorities that she used an account on Kik - where she reportedly was known as 'YourFavoriteBunBun' - to make her sales. 

She allegedly made around 20 sales and over $1,000 (£680) from the online business for more than a year, but relatives who found out about it told her mother, who then called police.

A Secret Service agent who sexted an undercover police officer posing as a 14-year-old girl also allegedly admitted to sending obscene pictures and message to two other underage girls.

Lee Robert Moore, who worked as a uniformed officer at the White House, was arrested in an online sting by Delaware State Police in November last year.

In an affidavit, Detective Kevin McKay said he was first contacted by Moore on social media app Meet24, but then agreed to chat using messaging app Kik, as it allows the exchange of images and videos.

A 15-year-old from Ohio was kidnapped and held against her will by a 41-year-old man after she told him she was unhappy at home on Kik, police said.

Alexis  'Lexi' Boroviak, 15, was rescued by authorities 23 days after going missing in Marthasville, Missouri, a nine-hour car drive away from her home in Brooklyn, Ohio.

Chris Schroeder is facing federal and state charges after authorities found evidence that he had engaged in sexual intercourse with the teenager.

A Philadelphia mother was sentenced to 25 years in prison for offering her six-year-old daughter for sex to a man she met in a chat room on Kik Messenger.

Christine Yoder pleaded guilty in March last year to two counts each of producing child pornography and distributing sexually explicit photographs. 

Authorities said she offered to fly her eldest daughter to Detroit to have sex with a man she met in a Kik chat room, where she went under the user name 'freakygirl82.'

A 14-year-old Alabama girl was found hanged in her bedroom after exchanging messages about auto-erotic asphyxiation with strange men she met on Kik. 

Sydney Dane Sellers was found dead in her home in Pell City by her mother, who later turned her daughter's iPhone on.

When Kik opened up, she saw what her daughter had been messaging at the time of her death. 

An Arizona woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison and lifetime probation for seducing teenage boys while pretending to be a 15-year-old girl.

Anna Areola-Hernandez, 24, of Glendale, pleaded guilty to three counts of child molestation. She admitted to authorities that she had sex with a 13-year-old boy, but told him she was 15, after the boy's mother called police. 

Prosecutors said she used messaging apps including Kik, Snapchat to lure multiple teenage boys.