Did kik have poor data retention prior to owner change

1. What Kik said it kept and for how long

Kik’s own help documentation states plainly that the company “does not retain the content of user chats” and therefore cannot provide full conversation histories to users, although it will supply retrievable account data if an account is active ^[1]. Historical public documentation cited in mainstream summaries and encyclopedic entries likewise notes that Kik preserved a limited set of account-related data — names, email, profile picture links, device info and recent IP — for short law-enforcement-preservation windows (commonly reported as 90 days) pending valid orders ^[2]. Those two strands — “no chat content retained” plus short-term metadata preservation — form Kik’s core published retention narrative ^{[1] [2]}.

2. How outside reviewers judged those retention practices

Privacy assessment organizations rated Kik with “Warning” flags not specifically for chat retention length but for other privacy concerns such as data use for profiling, unclear third‑party sales, and failure to meet recommended privacy defaults ^{[3] [4]}. Common Sense’s evaluation explicitly did not evaluate retention-period specifics in its scoring but flagged opacity on whether data are sold or reidentified, indicating broader concerns about transparency that bear on trust in any retention claims ^{[3] [4]}. That combination — a public claim of minimal chat retention alongside independent warnings about opacity — suggests shortcomings in clarity and governance even if they do not prove systematic hoarding of message content ^{[1] [3]}.

3. Contradictions, peripheral claims, and marketing pushback

Commercial and blog sources sometimes present Kik as having robust security features or configurable privacy settings, but these accounts are not authoritative audits and occasionally contradict the company’s own help pages on what is retrievable ^[5]. Meanwhile, Kik’s public-facing privacy policy language reserves broad rights to retain data “for as long as reasonably needed” to provide services or for legal reasons, which can be read as leaving retention decisions to internal discretion and legal obligation rather than clear fixed timelines ^[6]. That legal phrasing feeds skepticism cited by privacy evaluators and independent commentators about how long specific pieces of data may actually persist ^{[6] [3]}.

4. Did practices change after an ownership transition?

The provided sources document Kik’s retention posture and third‑party evaluations but do not include a timeline tying those policies to any specific ownership change or describing how retention was altered after a sale or transfer ^{[6] [2] [7]}. Public privacy policy snapshots and help articles in the record show consistency in the “no chat content retained” claim and short-term metadata preservation guidance, but there is no source here demonstrating a before/after comparison around an owner change, so any definitive claim about improvement or degradation post-acquisition cannot be supported from the supplied material ^{[1] [2] [7]}.

5. Bottom line — interpretation and caveats

Based on company help pages and public summaries, Kik did not routinely retain full conversation content and kept only limited metadata for short windows (e.g., 90 days) for law‑enforcement preservation ^{[1] [2]}. However, independent privacy assessments flagged Kik for opacity on data uses, potential profiling, and unclear third‑party practices — weaknesses that amount to “poor transparency” if not literally “poor retention” in the sense of massive data hoarding ^{[3] [4]}. Given the absence of sources documenting changes tied to an owner transition in the provided record, it cannot be asserted from these documents whether retention improved or worsened after any change in ownership ^{[6] [7]}.