Bonus; Kik-mageddon

Transcript

well hey there everyone and thank you very much for tuning in this is a bonus episode of swinging dead under podcast today we are talking about kickmageddon why are we talking about kick well if you have been listening to any podcast watching the news or paying attention to twitter, you probably would have realised that there has been some movement in the realm of Kik. Now, Kik is actually a mobile phone app that many swingers have been using for years to communicate with each other. It is a great way to set up multiple groups, multiple conversations.

You and your partner can have your own accounts. Now, what the hell has been happening? Well, Ted Livingston, who is the creator and owner of Kik, has announced through medium.com on the 24th of September that he will be shutting down Kik, the app. Basically, this is because they are focusing on Kin, the cryptocurrency. I won't get too much into that, but essentially they're shutting the app down really with little notice.

So this came out on the 24th of September, and there are rumors flying around about the end date that it's actually going to be shut down being the 28th or the 29th of September. So really within a week of the notification that they're not pursuing Kik anymore, they've decided to actually shut the app down. So this is huge news. At the moment, we have over 70 active chats on Kik.

as you would expect why i'm calling this kickmageddon is because people are freaking the fuck out everybody's wondering which app do we turn to where do we go how do we get the information out of the apps you know needing to go into 70 different chats and say hey here's our details here's where we're going here's what we're doing can we get yours as well is both time consuming and and difficult. Some people on Twitter are saying, wait us for waiting. We want to wait until we understand where the masses are going.

And this leads to a really concerning aspect of this app shutting down because it has been so widely popular, is that people are going to scatter off into the wind. Some people are talking about using MeWe. Some people are talking about using Telegram, Wire. There are over 20 different apps that people are recommending. And of course, we don't want to have multiple apps on our phone. So there is a bit of a concern that everybody is going to be scattering into the wind and you are going to now need, rather than having kick on your phone, you're going to need multiple apps on your phone.

And so people are obviously and naturally pretty goddamn concerned about that. Now, yes, during these initial, I guess, weeks and months, we do anticipate there is going to be a flux. Some people are going to be moving around the different apps until as a community, we settle on one app. And that's what today's podcast is all about. This is a bonus episode because I probably will delete this episode in a couple of months after this is all settled down.

But I wanted to get the information out there to explain to people what is happening, what apps have been looked at and what the public are generally tending to lean towards and say. Because as I said before, there probably will be some moving and shaking, but eventually there'll be an app of choice. And I imagine that's where most people will eventually end up or the bulk of people will end up. So that's what we're exploring today. Now, some of you may be asking the question, why not just use the fucking dating sites? I mean, that's what they're for.

That's how you even find these people to begin with. Why as a community do we find Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Cassidy or on Double Date Nation? And then why do we immediately take that offline and over to a mobile phone app? A lot of people wondering why that happens in the community. Some people don't do that. Some people like to exchange a few messages on the dating app before they move over to a mobile app. Personally, Daryl and I, we like to do it fairly rapidly and I'll tell you a little bit why.

We like to have a four-way chat going if we are talking to a couple, a three-way chat if we're talking to a single male or a single female. That way that person knows who is chatting backwards and forwards. It's also more instantaneous for us. A lot of the dating sites don't have a mobile phone app and so going onto my desktop or going onto the website through my phone is quite cumbersome. So you can't get that more instantaneous chat where you know who's talking to you and that you can actually get that instantaneously, do things like sending GIFs along.

We'll talk to Swingin' Cajuns a little bit about why it's a GIF and not a GIF, but hey, I'm Aussie, I can say whatever the hell I want. And we will be able to send things like movies, like, you know, little voice recordings. These kinds of fun, interactive things make a chat better for us.

And so that's why Kik has been so, you know, readily adapted by the Swinging swinging community because you do have that privacy on there you know you don't you can set up your username to whatever you want you know and you can label your chats and have group chats so that's why as a community we've really taken on board kick and so that's why this news comes as a bit of a shock to people so the dating sites they're great they're fantastic you can find like-minded people in your city, your country. You can travel, all these things. Dating sites are absolutely fantastic.

But the longevity of talking to people on a dating site or the ease of talking to people on a dating site versus an instantaneous app, that's why people move off them. So that's why I'm not dating sites. So some of you out there might've asked that question. I hope that helps to cover that off. Now, the next thing is what about security? A lot of people are worried about security. As a community, yes, we still do have to, unfortunately, hide in the shadows a little bit.

Oftentimes, we cannot come out, our family, our friends, our work environment, whatever the case may be, or fuck, maybe you just don't want to tell people what you'd like to do in the bedroom. Your choice. As a result of that, there is a discussion about security. How do I know that the app that I'm using is going to be secure enough to keep my conversations private? It's encrypted, so it's not sharing this information elsewhere. It's not the actual group conversations aren't being audited.

It's great that the app needs to be audited, so we'll talk a little bit about that later, but the actual conversations need to be remaining private. And I also don't want people selling my information, selling my phone number or my email to any third party. So security is extraordinarily important when you're looking into any app to use. And historically, Kik as well has been fantastic about this. Again, you really didn't need to input a lot of information in there.

You know, you could have that privacy to yourself and not really have to worry about what the hell was going on with your information and your data. So security is extraordinarily important as a whole to this community. And so that's something that we're going to explore a little bit later. Some of the recommendations for keeping your information secure is using a Google voice number or a burner phone. Yes, those things can absolutely be done. And I'm going to talk about Telegram a little bit later because that does require your mobile phone number.

Now, a lot of us have a mobile phone number that's dual purpose. My mobile phone number, for example, has over eight years of a project and management contacts within my phone. So the instant that I connect to a site or an app that requires my phone number, that concerns me. That phone number is also perhaps linked to your own personal Facebook account, to your Instagram account. And those are easily accessible ways for people to actually find you, you know, people that are in your contacts. So the option to then use Google Voice, it's not a bad one.

The problematic thing with Google Voice is that it is only free in the United States of America. And the last time I checked, there is a whole other world out there of people that are talking, moving around and dating and traveling, like-minded swingers. So Google Voice, whilst great in the United States of America, if I were to use Google Voice, I do have to use the international version. Hey, it's an option to me, but it's another, I think, 30 or $60 a month on top of what I'm already paying for my dating sites and everything else out there that I probably don't really wanna pay.

So I'm not personally going to go down the Google Voice route, but if you are in the USA, have at it, fill your boots, get a Google Voice number. And as I said before, a lot of people are also using burner phones. Personally, I don't like having those two options. I'd rather just be able to use my private phone and just use an app that is slightly more secure and doesn't require those data points. So that's a wrap up of what's happening, what we're talking about on today's podcast.

Going to give you guys a quick break now and then I will be back talking about multiple apps and which one ultimately that we are going to choose. So this episode is all about that. I'm going to keep it pretty short, pretty sweet. I'm not going to do an hour long episode talking about what's happening with kickers, fuck it. Okay, this one's going to be pretty quick and sweet but I will be back soon. Thank you for hanging in there. All right, welcome back, guys. So to give you some perspective, there are a number of polls that have been happening around the internet at the moment.

We have actually done a number on platforms and Twitter, on Instagram. There's some happening on different Swinger forums. There's ones happening on Cassidy, on Double Date Nation, on SDC. This is posted everywhere in the forums because as I said, this is kickmageddon, right? Everyone's really worried about this. So I'm going to give you a quick idea of what's happening on some of the polls that we've been taking and some of the leaderboards. And then I'm going to talk about those apps in order.

So at the moment, as I said before, there are about 20 or so more apps that people are floating as potential options and a potential pick replacement. I'm going to talk about the ones that I really don't like first, and I'm going to tell you why they're at the bottom of the list. Facebook Messenger, two votes. The reason for this is because who the fuck uses Facebook anymore? Personally, I haven't used Facebook in years. A lot of people say that the moment that your parents joined Facebook, it became uncool. And so you stopped using it. I don't use Facebook.

I also therefore don't have a swinger Facebook profile. Now, some people out there do have dual profiles on Facebook. So they've got their own personal profile. That's their family and friends and vanilla life. And then they've got their swinger Facebook profile where they join groups, you know, have private messages, arrange parties and that sort of thing. That is a way that you could absolutely use Facebook Messenger. But again, that would require the couple to have two profiles, two swinger profiles in which they could converse with other people.

And if you would ask me to join Facebook to talk to you, I'm going to outrightly say no, because I'm not going to join Facebook. So Facebook in itself is not a great option because not everybody's on it. And you have to two profiles if you are a couple. So I'm going to talk about that multiple times throughout today's chat. Now the other one is Slack. Slack is a commonly used app for workplace. So Slack is generally used by workplace, sometimes used by industry professionals. I'm not going to go too much into Slack because it did score a zero mark on it.

Now some of these scores might be because people just don't know what these apps are. So, they're going to obviously vote for the app that either they've used or they have an understanding of. So, we'll move straight on from there. Now, we're going to head over to some of the apps that actually did score reasonably well. Snapchat. Snapchat is a fairly new app. It's obviously focused a couple of years ago. It's focused very much on the younger generation and it's fun, it's flirty, it's got filters, you can remain anonymous or as anonymous as you like.

Snapchat, SC, that's what it's called generally by groups. There's also a new app coming through, TikTok, same thing. It's basically little snapshots, little videos and those sorts of things. You can choose your privacy levels. Again though, not everybody uses Snapchat and it can be quite cumbersome for people to have this additional app on their phone. Snapchat scored reasonably high though. So Snapchat actually came in as the fifth runner of apps that people wanted to use. So that's an option definitely on our particular poll on Twitter.

Out of the over 400 votes, Snapchat actually did score third. So it was in line with Telegram. Discord. Now Discord Discord was originally set up by gamers. Discord, Discord server, Discord app, however you want to refer to it. That actually also scored quite high on some of the swinger forums. And the reason I believe that that scored so high was because some of the people in those forums are also gamers and therefore know Discord. Personally, I find Discord to be cumbersome. I'm not really a big fan of it, so I'm not going to talk too much about Discord today. The next one is WhatsApp.

So down in Asia, we actually use WhatsApp for all of our discussions. WhatsApp, we use it for business, we use it for pleasure, we use it for friends, all around the world. But mostly in Asia, it's so heavily utilized for everything. As a day-to-day business, we would be receiving WhatsApp from people in China, in Japan, in Korea, all around the Asia-Pacific region. WhatsApp is extraordinarily highly utilized by business.

Now, as a result of that, I personally relate WhatsApp to be either business-related or if I'm talking to my very close friends who perhaps aren't people that are just dating people, you know, people that I'm actually friends with on a longer-term basis would be in my WhatsApp. But again, as things pop up on my WhatsApp, I'll either relate that mentally to being a work related topic or my long term friends. So I don't look at that and go, holy shit, that's about the date that I'm about to go on with a single guy on Saturday night. So it's a little bit unsexy to me.

WhatsApp is a great messenger app. Okay, there's no problem with WhatsApp. I actually, I find it to be fantastic. Again, you can send animated pictures on there. You can send voice messages, all of these great things. But WhatsApp does require your phone number. So again, unless you are using that Google voice number I spoke about earlier, or a burner phone, or a special private swinger mobile phone, then WhatsApp's really not gonna be great for you because you are going to need to give up that phone number.

And as I said before, that phone number possibly linked to Facebook, Instagram, and other areas all over the web. If you've ever left a forum review for anyone where your mobile phone has been linked, all it takes is a quick Google of your mobile phone and your information is going to come up. So that's just something to be aware of when you're looking at apps that do require your mobile phone to be able to even connect with them. All right, let's move over now to Telegram. So Telegram was floated originally to me by that couple next door. They're using Telegram.

Telegram does require, again, your mobile phone to be inputted into the app. You can, however, choose some privacy settings and hide your profile a little bit so people can't actually see your mobile phone. You can also then select a personal username and give that to people rather than using your mobile phone. Now, the other day, I did actually link an article on a Twitter account about how to set up Telegram without giving people your phone number. Google Voice is definitely one of the ways that people do that. Again, if you're in the United States, perfect.

Now for me overseas, Telegram, I can actually access it in Asia, but again, I don't wanna use my mobile phone number to access this mobile phone app and because Google Voice is gonna cost me money, I don't wanna do that either.

I did, however, look into the app Telegram and I downloaded and I started to use it and instantly saw that actually yes even though i have clicked on no please don't share my information with my contacts in my phone even though i followed the instructions on that particular website where it said here's how to set it up without people knowing about you i had some issues i could see that it was initially starting to starting to connect with people and in fact actually daryl has been using telegram for work for a number of months now.

Because of this recent kickmageddon, all of a sudden, some of our swinger friends were popping up in his Telegram. He actually said to me three days ago, what the hell's going on? Why is everyone using Telegram? And I didn't actually realize he was using it for work. So I played a little bit dumb. I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, all of a sudden, I've got all these contact requests from people who are our swinger friends. They found him pretty goddamn easily. So that's something to be mindful of with Telegram.

I'm actually going to cut now to a quick audio snippet that I received from Jay from Average Swingers about using Telegram. So Jay saw the Twitter post, looked at Telegram, downloaded it, as well as Brandon from AS Bull. And here's what average swingers have to say about that. So I downloaded Telegram. I went through and did all the privacy settings, made sure not to connect my contacts, made sure to hide my phone number so no one could see it.

And like the one vanilla friend we still have was able to find me and Brandon within a couple of hours of a sign up for Telegram because he signed up around the same time I did and that's about it it was just like after not connecting contacts hiding a phone number and doing all the stuff you're supposed to do to keep a cigarette he found us in a matter of hours without even really looking for us so as you can see from his experience he did everything that he was supposed to do set privacy up, and yet he still had a vanilla friend find him.

So unless you have that burner phone, unless you have that Google number or a secondary phone, whatever the case may be, Telegram may not be for you if you are trying to keep your privacy set different from your swinger to your vanilla life. Just something to think about. However, Telegram did actually score quite highly. So it is on the second most recommended apps on all three polls that we did. So Telegram, again, highly understood, highly recognized, and is recommended. But for me, it is not going to work because I use my phone for so much more than my swinger identity.

So that's just something to be mindful of when you are using Telegram. You won't find me on Telegram. I deleted the app from my phone, and I won't be using it for the swinger lifestyle. Again, you may find that the masses move and shift. People may move to Telegram. Am I going to? Probably not. Okay, next up is Wicker. So W-I-C-K-R. Wicker gets an honorable mention because it did score third in one of my polls, but it's not mentioned in my other polls. This is an app that people do use, do recommend. Again, it has great functionality, great features.

You can set up username but I don't think a lot of people know it and so whilst Wicca might seem like a good option, there is some concerns about its security. Security in Wicca is not end-to-end encrypted and therefore they may be reading the information that is stored within there, both from the actual organization themselves and your other mobile phone apps and your connection on Google, et cetera. So whilst Wicker is a good option, it's fairly user-friendly, it does all the things that I would essentially want it to do, my concerns lie more with the security of the actual app itself.

Now, I know I'm throwing a lot of names at you guys, so I am actually going to post up a quick blog on our website, swingingdownunder.com forward slash kick. Make it nice and simple, K-I-K. Go check that out. I'm going to post pictures of our polls that are up there. I'm going to post all the information about each of these apps that I'm talking about as well with links to them, information about them. I'm going to try and squeeze in some information about their privacy policies, if they have one, and their terms of service.

Let's pause and take a little quick look at terms of service because I'm about to talk about them. I'm going to try and squeeze in some information about their privacy policies if they have one and their terms of service. Let's pause and take a little quick look at terms of service because I'm about to talk about MeWe. Terms of service or TOS are what the organization provides to you in order for you to use their app and you must agree to these terms of services generally as you download the app before you create a profile. It'll ask you, do you accept our terms of service?

Now on the MeWe terms of service, as I talk now about MeWe, there is actually a section in there where it talks about what they're able to do in group chats and what they're able to look at in group chats. Before I talk about MeWe, let me talk about terms of service example for PayPal.

PayPal's terms and services in section nine specifically states that you cannot, prohibited items are that you cannot have any kind of adult content nudity anything like that similarly for patreon patreon's terms of services same thing no nudity no adult content now paypal and patreon have been known to shut people down so they will kick you off their apps will kick you off their websites that's something in the case of paypal it will hold your money for 180 days and then that is you done for life. Terms of service are extraordinarily important.

One, so you know what you're getting into and so you know what your expectations are of that app and the information that they're going to store on your behalf. But two, because if you do go against those terms of service, you are likely to be kicked off that app without any notice or that website or what have you. And there are going to be ramifications. For PayPal, they will hold your money for 180 days and they will ban you for life. That is you done. You can't even buy a book on Amazon through PayPal anymore. You are done. So that is why terms of service are extraordinarily important.

And why we do recommend that you actually spend time reviewing the privacy policy and reviewing the terms of service when you sign up for any website, any app. And that goes for a dating site right through to what we're talking about today, a mobile phone app. Okay. I've got two left. MeWe. MeWe is actually not a bad option for you. MeWe, you can use it on your mobile phone and your desktop. Now, something that's always bugged me about Kik is that I constantly have to use my mobile phone.

When I spend so much of my goddamn day in front of three screens in my house, I could easily use my computer. That's why WhatsApp is actually quite handy for me. I can talk to my friends and I can use my desktop version of WhatsApp without it actually cancelling out any of my phone apps or cancelling out anything like that. So that's why MeWe is actually not a bad option. We've been using MeWe now for almost two years. Now we use MeWe for different groups that we're part of, or if different events come up, we've used MeWe in the past. Most recently, we use MeWe for Naughty in New Orleans.

Previous to that, we use MeWe for the Vegas trip. It's not so bad. I actually like it. Again, I can use it on my phone. I can use it on my desktop. It's not too bad. I can send animated options. I can send photos through. My problem historically with Miwi is that I can't send videos, but that's neither here nor there. My problem today, however, is with Miwi's terms of service. The terms of service in Miwi state that their groups can be monitored by employees and are not encrypted.

They do have policy against pornography look most apps do right we all know that so you know just user beware that if you are starting to post up pretty explicit photos in there and they're auditing they do have the right to remove you from that site or shut down the group that is being utilized the monitoring obviously it's very concerning if you're posting adult content to groups. Regular chats can also be monitored. Private chats are encrypted and cannot be monitored. What that means to me is that MiWi, yes, they are looking into what is being discussed in each of their groups.

It's also not encrypted, so they are sharing that information with other apps and other websites as well, into what you're searching, what you're talking about, which is why, as we go on to explain later by Swinging Cajuns, sometimes that dildo that you've been talking about then later appears on your Google, you know, you might be interested in list or Amazon wishlist, etc. So that concerned me when I read that about MeWe. We've been using MeWe, as I said, for two years, and I really never thought a hell of a lot about it. You know, I didn't look in too far into the terms of service of MeWe.

Am I still going to continue using MeWe? Absolutely. You know, I'm part of a number of groups on MeWe. I've got a number of chats going on MeWe. So I'm not going to shut MeWe down because of this. But however, I am a little bit more enlightened today and a little bit more educated than perhaps I was before.

MeWe ranked the highest recommended app across all three polls that we were operating and is highly recognized and recommended by the swinger community will me we get a reasonable amount of people join and a lot of people are talking about me we joining absolutely i firmly believe that this will be a fairly large division of people against a number of different apps and as i said maybe later people will start to settle down and there'll be one kind of bulk chosen app definitely me we is going to be that list. MiWi has ranked the top of the recommended apps.

You can use it on multiple platforms. You can set up different profiles on there. You don't have to share your mobile phone number if you don't want to. You can change your username. You can change your photos. You can share photos. You can share photos with a time limit on them. All things that people really enjoy in Swingerland. You can set up groups. The groups don't have a limit. You know, these are all really positive aspects of MeWe. And that's one of the reasons why I'll continue to use it.

I also do believe, though, that about, I don't know, 70% of the people are probably going to end up in MeWe at that first point in time. My last comment about MeWe and my big concern about MeWe is that people can pretty easily search you if you have an open profile. When you set up your profile on MeWe, it will ask you a number of privacy and security questions. Now, if you set up your profile to be of the highest security level, which many swingers would do when they first set up their profile, they'll go, hell yeah, I don't want to be searched by randos.

So you'll set up your profile and you'll say, hey, I'm Kate from Swinging Down Under. And that's what I want my profile name to be. And then you're out with people or you're talking to people on a swinger dating site and you'll say, hey, let's change over to MeWe. You know, really want to set up a date with you guys. Let's start chatting. Let's see if we've got, you know, some interest there and let's start arranging our next date. So let's move to MeWe. Here's my username, Kate Swinging Down Under.

Now, because I've set my profile up on the highest security level, that person, there is no way in hell they can actually search your name now even if you have multiple friends they cannot find you because you have the highest level of security the problem with that is is that for the number of people that requested to be in our group heading to naughty in new orleans where we used me we i couldn't add half of them because i was so concerned about security rightly so that they set their privacy levels to high i actually had to request that they either send me a friend request first, and then I can add them to the group, or they change their privacy and security settings to a lower standard so I could actually search them.

That's a pretty bloody big problem for me, because that means that one of you has to have a lower privacy and security settings for you to actually connect with each other. Otherwise, you can send a personal link. So you can link through your phone through whatsapp or through the dating site copy and paste the link of here's my profile on miwi please have a look again depending on the security and the privacy settings sometimes even that link does not work if they're high enough now the problem with having an open profile such as my current one is that randos can find you at the drop of a hat.

My profile at the moment, I have over 250 friend requests or connection requests on MeWe from people that I have no idea who they are. Now, I was quite naive when I first joined MeWe, so I accepted them all in the beginning. Next thing I know, my social wall is cockshot, clunge.

You know, there is people up there just posting, of course, because they want to, they want to show themselves off and that's absolutely fine, but I didn't realize what was actually happening, I thought, hey, these people are connecting with me, that's great, it's kind of like Twitter, we'll move forward, it is like Twitter in the sense that you're going to see a bunch of cockshots on your wall and people fucking that, hey, maybe you don't want to see, maybe you do, that's up to you guys, but that's why I have a problem with MeWe, so at the moment, my 250-odd friend requests, I don't know if those people are actually part of the groups that I'm a part of because you can't add a comment to it, perhaps like you can on a dating site like Cassidy.

You can send people a friend request and you can add a little comment to say, hey, I'm Kate from Swinging and Under. Can't do that on MeWe. So right now with these 250-odd randos, I don't know if 10% of them are actually people that I should be connecting with purely because I can't tell if they're in the same group as me, if they actually are part of something where I'm actually might want to connect with these people. So what I've done is I've left it there and that number keeps growing and growing and growing. It used to be a hundred and it was 150. Now it's 250.

I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with it. I don't know whether to accept them all or reject them all to get rid of that annoying red dot that's up in the corner of my screen. So whilst MiWi has its downsides, it has its concerns with terms of service, and obviously it has its concerns with the privacy and security settings, it is relatively a good app. It's a little bit clunky though. It does seem like it has different areas where it can be quite confusing to people if you haven't been using it for a long time.

I recall when I first downloaded it, the difference between a group and event, a group chat versus an actual group wall post, the difference between having an event in that group and then that event also creates a secondary group area and a secondary event chat function can get a little bit confusing. But the beautiful thing about MeWe is you can also tag people in certain comments.

So if you're in a large group, say we were at Nordian New Orleans, I believe we had over 100 people in our group, you can actually at tag people and it will send me a notification that you've tagged me trying to alert me to some kind of information or a response that's been contained within. Unlike WhatsApp, however, you cannot click on that and reply to that comment.

So if you are in a group chat and you see something funny or interesting that happened a day ago and you're finally getting onto the app now and it's 100 messages before, you can't actually really draw your attention unless you app tag that person. So you can't heart the message, share the message, or respond to the message like you can in so many different other apps. So that's kind of a wrap up on MeWe. I will continue to use it. I don't have huge issues with those terms of service. It does concern me. And all it means for me is that I will not be sharing any explicit information.

And I will be very, very aware that my information and my data can be possibly shared and viewed by the employees over at MeWe under their terms of service, which yes, when I set my app up, I agreed to. All right, let's take a quick break. I'm going to come back and I'm going to talk about Wire. All right, Wire app. Some of you may not have even heard of this before. You may not even know what it is. Wire app scored extraordinarily low on all three polls that I was running. And I think purely because people don't know what it is.

Some of us went out there and actually did the groundwork and downloaded all these different apps, tried them out and decided what was going to work best for us. Swinging Cajuns are definitely one of those people. We're going to hear from Swinging Cajuns in a little bit about why they're choosing to move to Wire. In a snapshot, Wire is a mobile phone app. You can also use it on your desktop. You can get the free version. There's also a pro version that companies use.

And actually, if you go onto their website, you can see information about their privacy policy, their encryption, and who they're working with. Not to mention people like financial organizations and government organizations. That tells me that they have a pretty high respect for privacy and security. So if you go and have a look at them, they do talk about their end-to-end encryption. So again, you've got that, I guess, confidence that people aren't going to be looking into your information that's being stored and that the app itself is not going to be sharing that information out there.

So they're using Capterra. That's a pretty secure organization. So if you actually head over to their website, you'll actually be able to find out more information about Wire and we do recommend downloading it and having a look.

Try different apps out don't take our word for it actually go in and have a look just be mindful with obviously telegram etc that use your mobile phone that it may share information wire in a nutshell video and phone calls saves photos back up your chats add by username great as we spoke about before you can also change your username that's a beautiful feature you know when we first started out, we used a Sydney, I think something to do with Sydney, because that's where we started out. And that's my Kik username still today.

Even though most of our dating sites have changed names, we still have to keep that particular one on Kik, because if I deleted it and tried to do a new one, I have to redo all my chats. The other thing too with Kik that was always annoying is that if you had your phone here and then you turned and tried to use something else or you got a new phone, it deleted your entire history. As I just said, you can back up your chat so you don't need to do that. You can tick a checkbox when you sign up so it never touches your contacts. You can sign up via email or by phone number.

I actually chose today to sign up via email and it sent me a code and it worked perfectly. So you don't need to use your mobile phone. That's perfect. Password protected, of course, is great. Has a chat, a group chat feature, which is fantastic. And you can send photos with a time limit if you like, kind of similar to Snapchat. I'm going to hand over now to Swinging Cajuns. Swinging Cajuns, if you do follow them on Twitter, you'll notice that Mrs. Swinging Cajuns has been very vocal in her idea of enjoying wire. I've actually been talking to her on the wire app this morning.

Again, I've hearted some of the messages that she has sent me and it is fantastic so far. Now, Swingin' Cajuns also do their own blog. So I'm going to give them a little bit of a plug here. If you head to swingingcajuns.com, you'll find their blog. And actually their latest blog release, Just Leave It, I'll Do It Later, which features a laundry picture here is a great read. So I do recommend to jump over and have a look at that. But we are gonna hear now from Mrs. Swinging Cajuns. Thank you so much for sharing the information with us and doing the ground leg work.

And you'll hear what that means in a little bit. Again, it's GIF. It's not GIF. It's Aussie. I'm Aussie. Okay. Let's hear from Swinging Cajuns. Thanks so much. Hey everybody. This is Sarah. You might know me on Twitter as Mrs. SwingCajuns. And if you're on Twitter, you've probably seen me post once. I mean, I don't really post that much. Maybe twice about this new app that I found called Wire. I know everybody was devastated when they heard they were going to lose their messaging app. The kick was going away. And who really cares about cryptocurrency anyway?

I mean, I don't even know what the hell it is. I started researching apps on the internet and I probably downloaded at least a dozen, downloaded them, logged in, tried Mr. Swinging Cajun. He downloaded them with me. We messaged back and forth. Some of them we immediately deleted. Discord is one of the ones that was just too complicated. We've used MeWe before for NIN. So we've had some experience with other apps as well. And then I got, I was very frustrated. I'm like, there is just nothing out there, anything like Kik. And then I saw SwingerDoc post on Twitter about Wire.

So I started Googling them and I found out this is a pretty cool company. I actually pitched this company to my CEO today for work because a lot of enterprises are using this instead of email and governments are actually starting to use this program as well because of the end-to-end encryption. If you don't know what that means, it means that when you type up a message on your wire and you hit send, it encrypts that message and it carries it all the into into the wire app on the other user's phone. And it doesn't unencrypt it until that person opens the message.

So what that means is other apps in your phone cannot read what you're typing. You might notice when you search in certain apps or on Google or whatever, and then you open Facebook and you're scrolling and there's an ad for that vibrator you just looked up in another app. That is what end-to-end encryption prevents. Your phone cannot see what you're doing. And so all the apps in your phone cannot see what you're doing. So anyway, that's a big thing for me is privacy. You do not need a phone number at all to have an account. You can log in with your swinger email.

You can, you know you know you have your username so just like kick where you could add your friend by username you can add your friend on here by username just just the same you can use a phone number to sign up if you want to be brave but you don't have to you can use an email instead some of the things that you can do while you're in the app like in chatting with somebody you can send a picture can send a video. They actually have a thing where you can draw pictures on the screen and send drawings. I know the iPhone does. I think the iPhone does that.

And I think you can do that with the Samsung too, but that's, that's just another thing in the app that you can do. You can send GIFs. You can, and it is GIF. It's the owner, the creator of GIF. It's GIF.

I promise i promise it's not gif you can send that you can send recordings uh you can even send your location your present location so let's say you're meeting up with your new date and you can't find each other send your location figure out where they are it's a very very simple layout that's one of the things i did not like about a lot of the apps especially me we they're very cumbers were in NIN, I'm like, I can't even find a damn group chat in here for NIN. And it's just, I'm pretty tech savvy. And the MiWi platform is not pretty.

It looks old, even though it's supposed to be trendy and techie. It's not. So the simple layout, you can have group chats just like in Kik. You can name your group chats just like in Kik. All of ours are Cajuns and whoever we're talking to, so it makes it easy for us to keep that separate. Lord knows when you open your chat and you send something to the wrong person is bad. Been there, done that. You can also change your username or your name. That was one thing that bugged me about Kik. We signed up originally as Mr. and Mrs.

Jones because it's a a song and then we realized there was a real mr and mrs jones and we couldn't have the same name as them so we had changed our name on all of our sites well i had to go back and i had to delete my entire kick get a new kick and now you don't have to do that anymore you can change your name and if people start stalking you you can change your username and they they won't be able to find you anymore you can also delete messages messages from a chat. So that's a really cool feature.

If you send something, you're like, oh shit, I misspelled that or oh shit, I sent that to the wrong person. You can delete it out of the app. You can delete it just for you or you can delete it for everybody. And we have found that when you delete a conversation, like a whole message, like the entire chat, it doesn't delete it off of everybody's phone. So, but I can live with that. It was the same thing I think for Kik. Let's see what else. You can add somebody by username. I think I already said that. You can do video calls, which is really cool.

When you're chatting with somebody, you want to know if they're real, they're legit. You can video call them. You can make phone calls through it. We have used this in some pretty bad cellular areas over the last couple of days.

And I will say the stability of the app is is really good you can just tell that this is a really well put together app so anyway i may not have said this there are some there's a professional version that a lot of companies are using so anyway that's all the reasons i love wire i probably love it for a lot more reasons i just haven't used it long enough to really know it i know that there's a lot of push Telegram, but having my vanilla friends know about this life is just not an option. So anyway, that's why we love this app. I hope that's helpful.

Kate and Daryl, we are very thankful that you'll reach out to us. Y'all have a great day. So that kind of wraps it up as to why today, and I've left wire till last, because I'm going to tell you that I will be using wire. I believe wire to be the best option for me being an international person without Google voice options, being somebody who does not want to share my mobile phone, being somebody who is concerned about terms of conditions and terms of service on an app and on a website, why I'm going to move my kick chats over to wire.

As I mentioned, I'm still going to be continuing to use MeWe for the different groups and areas that I'm a part of, but in terms of my day-to-day chatting with people on Kik, my 70 plus messages, I'm going to move them all over to Wire. So I guess if you're actually on my Kik messages right now, then please do reach out to me because I've got to send 70 messages today talking about my new Wire connection and inviting those people to those group chats. But I hope you found this podcast interesting.

As I said, it is is a bonus episode so I am going to delete this in a little while swingingdownunder.com forward slash kick I am going to try and put up all the information that I've mentioned here today it may be released slightly after this podcast because I just want to get this podcast out whilst kickmageddon is happening because we are on the precipice as I said before in 24 to 48 hours of kick shutting down so a reminder to everybody out there jump on your app right now get alternate methods of contact whether that's an email or something until you've made that decision which app you're actually going to move to and then you can send out a bulk email to people saying hey here's my new contact i know this sounds really ridiculous and it sounds cumbersome but unfortunately when these things happen that's what you've got to do.

So I hope you found that interesting. Thank you again for tuning in to Swinging Down Under podcast. I wanted to get this information out about Kickmageddon. Okay, big deal. But as I said before, those are some of the different apps that we've looked at. I'm moving to Wire. I'm interested to hear what you guys have to say.

Send me an email, cnd at swingingdownunder.com, us on Twitter or on Instagram let us know what app you're using let us know why you love it let us know what your thoughts are on some of the other apps we will also be able to put that information and update our blog as things progress over the next weeks because as we said we do firmly believe that there will be some shifting and eventually we will all as a community probably settle on one or two apps. Save us all downloading the 20 odd that are actually available right now. All right, guys, that's enough for me.

I've rambled now for 30 minutes. I hope you guys have a fantastic day, a month ahead. Please do sign up to our newsletter because it is coming out in the next three days, kind of around the same time that Kik is actually departing from us. So as always, appreciate the hell out of you guys. See you later.