It can be easy to find the Kik profiles of minors in the first place. Sometimes adults-typically men, although there are rare exceptions -pretend to already have compromising images of a teen and threaten to expose them unless they receive more. ![]() More from Vocativ: The Awesome Tech Jobs With The Most Difficult Hiring Processes " we deal with now are kids who go onto Kik maybe misrepresent their age, maybe are unfortunately looking for companionship with older adults and then start to establish a relationship, share photographs," he said. ![]() There are also cases when teens willingly share images of themselves with adults, according to Frattare. "The manipulation of the child ultimately results in the child compromising themselves." "An adult posing as a teen exploits a child through means of deception while preying upon the relative naïveté of the child," said Sergeant Aaron Whitt of the Anchorage Police Cyber Crimes unit. "Technology is a way for them to do that."īut, often enough, as in Walker's case, adults obtain child porn on Kik, as on any messaging app, by taking advantage of this impulse for exploration. "Children, as they grow, they explore their sexuality," she said. A lot of the illegal imagery that is shared on apps like Kik falls into the latter category, according to Ju'Riese Colon, executive director of outreach at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the clearinghouse for reporting and tracking child pornography. Now, the legal category of child porn is broad: it can include anything from videos of childhood sexual abuse to naked teenage selfies consensually swapped with significant others. Transmission of child porn on Kik happens in three main ways, according to experts: adults send it to each other, minors share it with adults and teens swap it with each other. In fact, you can sign up anonymously without having to prove anything about your identity-and that's part of the appeal for those searching for child porn. Kik officially bans anyone under the age of 13, although there's no age verification, and says anyone between the ages of 13 and 18 must have parental permission to use the app, but there's no required proof of that either. What is Kik? Learn all about what to watch for: And this technology won't catch predators seeking to convince underage children to create new pornographic images. It's a problem Kik, which did not respond to a request for comment, has started to combat by implementing technology that compares photos uploaded to the service with a database of known child porn images-but, clearly, it hasn't gone away. "Child pornography collectors and online predators began exploiting mobile devices the minute that the devices became common among teens and pre-teens," said David Frattare, commander of the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which handles child porn investigations for the state. Not only do they offer greater privacy, thanks in part to ironclad encryption that can foil even the FBI, but their ubiquity, combined with the explosion of messaging apps, provides potential predators countless more opportunities to connect with teenagers. It's a change facilitated by smartphones. More from Vocativ: Cocaine Makes Brain Cells Eat Themselves "They're now using Kik as their tool instead of using Yahoo to email back and forth." ![]() "In the old days, when they used to do it via email it was too easy to get caught," said Detective Sean Pierce of California's San Jose Police Department. Several experts told Vocativ that peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like BitTorrent are still where most adult transmission of child porn is happening, but plenty of it is moving to apps. His is just one of many recent child porn cases reportedly involving Kik-and it's part of a growing shift in how this kind of illegal material is being transmitted. Walker was convicted in a federal trial earlier this month. In one case, after a 12-year-old girl protested, he wrote, "Do u really want to be known as a Whore at school?" Then he reportedly threatened to expose his victims, who ranged in age from eight to 14, to their schools unless they sent more, according to police. Matthew Chaney Walker, a 25-year-old from Baton Rouge, La., allegedly used the popular messaging app Kik to pose as a young girl and convince nearly three dozen minors to send him naked photos of themselves. The app, which allows users to send text messages, videos and photos in one-on-one or group chats, has allegedly become one of the latest mediums used by sexual predators. Five-year-old messaging app Kik has a child pornography problem, according to experts.
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