Is Kik secure?

Use WhatsApp

Not at all secure but people say it is.

All great to know~ thanks.

Thanks Nude.

I was going to type some of that same info, but I got lazy.

We recently joined a new Telegram group. I can’t see any of the numbers for the members. If I try to add someone to my contact list I get a message which says essentially “you’ve added a new contact. When that person adds you to their contact list you will be able to see their phone number”

I believe if someone already has your number in their phone it will show up in both Signal and Telegram. I use Signal more and I think this is the case. However, at least with Signal if you and I were to connect via the new username system my phone number would not be known to you. And what's interesting with Signal is you can change usernames as often as you wish and it won't impact your existing connections. So you could change your Signal username to match your SLS ID for example, send it to me, and once we connect if you wanted to change it for a golfing buddy to something more vanilla you could. (The old "SLS" ID wouldn't work anymore however)

Thank you! I did that and asked a friend who I text with to screen shot me what she sees of me and there was my phone?! Strange, so i did not trust that being functional.

Jinx,

Telegram give you the option of who can see your number, either everyone, only your contacts, or nobody.

Tap settings…Privacy and Security…Phone number.

We also got rid of kik, it sucked after it came back to life.

We are loving telegram but i like idea of signal that keeps your phone number out of the picture. I do not think it is hidden in any way with telegram. If I am wrong please tell me.

Ditto

We both recently got rid of kik and aren’t planning to get it again. Too many bots / spam / nonsense.

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Ditto that. That app is garbage.

KIK is probably the least secure option out there, period.

Most secure? Signal, hands down. Signal recently upgraded where previously you had to find people via phone number. That is no longer the case, you give someone your username (which you can change at any point) and your phone number, while used to register, is never known by anyone. Messages are end to end encrypted and not stored on any Signal servers, meaning the only people who see them are the sender and the recipient(s) -- yes you can have group chats of up to a thousand people.

Telegram, while popular, does not encrypt messages by default, Signal is encrypted by default.

WhatsApp while very very popular outside of the US is at the whim of Meta, and from a lifestyle standpoint dangerous in that by default will automatically add any media you receive in messages to your camera's media roll, which is just what you want when you hand your phone to your kid or a friend... Or even worse the "automatic" memories from last week... Oh Timmy looks so cute! Oh the puppy! Who's dick is that???

Signal does not add media to your phone unless you specifically download it. Both WhatsApp and Signal can be secured with your PIN/Biometric login, so even if your phone is unlocked unauthorized people will have to know your PIN to get into the app.

And I didn't even touch on disappearing messages and single view media in Signal. Seriously, if you take your privacy at all seriously it is truly the gold standard. And with the new usernames you can use it for all your secure communication needs, changing usernames for whatever application you need the name for.

We both recently got rid of kik and aren’t planning to get it again. Too many bots / spam / nonsense.

Security with the person you're texting? Most likely. Security with the darkweb and spyware? Most likely not. Up to you on how much risk you're willing to take on. Honestly, Snapchat and Google Voice have better security.

Hi let me go at this from a different perspective. Kick's developers don't put one ioda of effort into following Apple's accessability guidelines. Given how careless they are about that it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that their developers don't put much effort into security as well.

We both use kik and have never had an issue.

He is implying that it's not encrypted which it is not. However it's far more anonymous than whatsapp, telegram, signal, or other encrypted traffic messagers.

I only use KIK with people I don't know as everything else requires giving them identifying info (phone number, email, etc.)

We have successfully used Kik for over 4 yrs with no issues we are aware of. Annoying ads and some bots.

I read this on the interwebs so it must be true:

Kik is good because it is relatively anonymous. You don't need a verified phone number or email to use it.

On the other hand, Kik is bad because messages are not encrypted end to end so it's possible that someone could see your messages.

We still use Kik because it's easy and still relatively popular. I particularly like the group chat feature.
Anyone hacking into our messages would probably be bored to death. We don't send very sensitive info with the app. We assume that any and everything online can or will be accessible to unknown parties.

The worse thing about Kik is the barrage of spam bots.

Hi gang. We just had a meeting with a SM who didn’t want to use Kik because he said it wasn’t secure. He said he does cyber security professionally so it got us concerned. Has anyone else heard this and do you have more information? We’ve been using Kik for sharing pictures and fun naughty texting. We’re on pause with that now until we learn more. What do you think and what do you know?