What happen to inactive kik accounts prior to owner change

1. What the acquisition actually did to the service infrastructure

When MediaLab announced it acquired Kik Messenger, the stated intent was to keep the app running and invest in it rather than shut it down, meaning the product, servers and user database were treated as assets to be continued under new ownership ^{[1] [5] [2]}. Reporting from multiple outlets repeats MediaLab’s public messaging that Kik “is here to stay” and that the company would introduce monetization and streamline features rather than perform a mass account purge ^{[1] [5] [2]}. Those statements imply continuity of user accounts — including inactive ones — but they are company claims about plans, not independent audits of data migration practices ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What Kik’s own policies allowed the new owner to do with accounts and data

Kik’s posted Privacy Policy explicitly permits sharing user information “in connection with ... any merger, sale of company assets, financing or acquisition” and among MediaLab and its affiliates, which means account records could lawfully be transferred to the buyer as part of the deal ^[3]. The Terms of Service also reserve the company’s right to suspend, terminate or retain user content and to investigate account activity and disclose data to law enforcement “as permitted and explained in our Privacy Policy” ^[4]. Those clauses provide the legal mechanism for the transfer and selective retention or deletion of both active and inactive accounts during an ownership change ^{[3] [4]}.

3. What actually happened to inactive accounts — what reporting shows and what it doesn’t

Public coverage of the acquisition focuses on rescue of the service, planned product changes, and the legal and financial backstory; reporters documented that MediaLab bought the messenger and intended to keep it online with changes such as ads and fewer bot features, but none of the cited reporting offers a granular breakdown of how many inactive accounts were migrated, archived, or purged at handover ^{[1] [5] [2] [6]}. The privacy and terms language shows transfers were permitted, but the available sources stop short of documenting concrete counts or a step-by-step data migration plan for dormant accounts — that is a gap in the public record ^{[3] [4]}.

4. Why law-enforcement friction matters to the record of inactive accounts

Past tensions between Kik and police over information access underscore a second dimension: investigators complained about delays and difficulty obtaining account data from Kik, which affected child-protection inquiries — that history suggests any transfer of account data during the sale would have been scrutinized by authorities and potentially slowed by legal requests or obligations ^[7]. But while those law-enforcement frictions are documented, the sources do not say the acquisition specifically resolved or exacerbated those problems for inactive accounts; they only establish context for how retained or transferred account information can have public-safety implications ^[7].

5. Competing narratives and remaining unknowns

MediaLab and Kik public statements frame the acquisition as a rescue that preserved users and data while promising product stability and monetization changes ^{[1] [5] [2]}, whereas privacy-language and law-enforcement complaints show the company always had the contractual latitude to move, share, or keep account records as business or legal needs dictated ^{[3] [4] [7]}. The decisive missing piece is any independent audit or reporting on exactly what happened to inactive accounts during the transfer — numbers, deletion logs, or a forensic migration report are not present in the sources provided, so a conclusive, itemized statement about every inactive account cannot be made from the publicly cited material ^{[1] [3] [7]}.