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You can personalize audio notifications with different tones and receive them when someone messages you, and you can also apply themes to your chats. Like most messaging apps, Kik sends notifications to let you know when you have sent your message and when it was received. The easy-to-use yet full-featured app has the familiar look and feel of an SMS text messenger but with a number of appealing perks. An optional feature checks for Kik accounts that match email addresses or phone numbers on your smartphone to help you find your contacts. They can’t see your email address, phone number, or birthday, though within a Kik group, everyone can see your username. With a username instead of a phone number, you don’t automatically share personal information with others - your chat companions on Kik can only see your display name, username, and profile picture. This greatly appeals to teen users (the official minimum age is 13 years old) as well as others with privacy concerns. With only a username as an ID, Kik lets you exchange messages, photos, videos, sketches, stickers, mobile webpages, emoji, and other content with others on the platform. The trick is that you do not have to register your phone number with Kik - it needs only your name and email - which lets you maintain a super-private presence on the platform that’s identifiable only by your username, the name you register with.
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It hasn’t disclosed any user figures since 2016. As of 2016, Kik Messenger had some 300 million registered users and was used by an estimated 40% of teenagers in the U.S.
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While Kik is not unique in how it transmits communications, it differentiates itself with a distinctive but controversial effort to target a specific demographic: Kik appeals to the teenage crowd because of its emphasis on privacy and anonymity. It’s available on iOS, Android, and Amazon for Kindle Fire. Kik Messenger is a free instant messaging and social networking app, now owned by the California based MediaLab, that uses your smartphone’s data plan or Wi-Fi connection to send messages to other Kik users, bypassing SMS (short message service). In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know. Whether you’re looking to protect your privacy or you’re just looking for a new way to keep in touch, there’s a lot to know about this popular messaging app.
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