Obtaining Useful Information From A Kik Profile

Last week I posted about how it was possible to obtain hi-res images and other information from Instagram and Twitter accounts by amending some of the URLs that the applications present by default.

In a similar way it’s possible to obtain extra information about a Kik user profile by conducting queries with the correct URL. Kik is a popular mobile chat app that does not ask users to provide much personal information for verification, which is partly why it attracts so many unpleasant individuals. Nevertheless it does provide a little useful information about the user, including a hi-res profile pic.

The URL we need to adjust is as follows:

https://ws2.kik.com/user/<username_goes_here>

If the user has a valid account, the URL will direct you to a small JSON file containing the user’s provided first name, last name, the time they last modified their profile image (in Unix time), and a link to a hi-res version of their profile picture.

For a quick example, we can apply this to a Kik account which claims to be an “official” account for Zendaya (whether this is really the official account or not is beside the point). Her Kik username is “zendayakik”, so the URL to query is:

https://ws2.kik.com/user/zendayakik

We can now see the JSON file that gives the following information:

  1. First name
  2. Last name (which of course is left blank, maybe Zendaya was a bad example to choose!)
  3. Time the profile picture was last modified. This is in unix time, which you can convert to regular human-readable time with a tool like Unix Converter. If this is the original profile picture, it can give an indication when the account was created.
  4. URL to a hi-res version of the user’s profile picture. This is a much clearer image than the one available in the app by default.

As always, there’s no substitute for verifying that the information Kik provides is actually true, but this technique can help to give you a head start for any Kik-based enquiries you need to make.

 

3 thoughts on “Obtaining Useful Information From A Kik Profile”

    1. It is most likely the case that this technique no longer works. I haven’t tried it for a long time but this article is several years old now.

  1. It’s still works. Just make sure you don’t put the on either side of the username. And when you enter the help for the image it gives you remove all backslashes that they put next for the forward slashes. Also remove the “ and } at the end.

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