RIM Suing Kik?!

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While Kik has been in the news quite a bit lately with it's popularity, it's taken a rather grim twist for the fellas over at Kik and potentially at RIM itself. Kik was a popular multi-platform messaging system very similar to BlackBerry Messenger; I say was merely because on RIM's BlackBerry OS it is not going to continue to be an offered application. RIM is reportedly suing Kik for patent infringement however, we don't know which patent as of yet. While I 100% agree RIM has the right to sue over property that rightfully belongs to them, I think picking on the little guy is a bit absurd. As far as I'm aware of, RIM pulled the app, rejected their pushing capabilities and is NOW suing them all in a very short period of time; either RIM has something big up their sleeves or they are potentially making themselves out to look like the bad guys here.

Shortly after RIM pulled Kik and revoked it's keys, Kik put up a plea to RIM saying "On behalf of our nearly one million Kik users on Blackberry devices, we truly hope RIM reverses these steps." I do agree that RIM should allow BlackBerry users to use whichever messaging platform they choose, however, when that platform violates any terms of service or violates copyright infringement laws, they deserved to be punished. The steps towards enforcing the punishment and the punishment itself need to be done in a manner that doesn't make RIM look like the bad guys. RIM has had nothing but great things recently and this little incident has made quite a few people turn to the other cheek (the one with Android and iPhone on it).

There have also been reports that they might not only have been copyright infringements but a security flaw as well which may be the reason it was taken down so swiftly. According to a member who reported a security flaw within Kik:

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Originally Posted by wildta

Kik has a serious privacy flaw. Kik ties in a person's username with their email address. Kik then sorts through the person's addressbook to find potential friends. This is considered a major privacy issue because a user may not want someone that is in their addressbook to know they have a Kik account--but they will because if they have your email address then they also have your Kik username without authorization or adding that person to your friends list. I understand the usefulness of finding other Kik users quite easily but there should be an ability to turn off the feature that searches for other Kik users in your addressbook.

There's a reason why Blackberry Messenger allows its users to accept/reject another user before they are able to message them, and that it doesn't just sift through the user's address book looking for other potential BBM users.

I'm going to report this flaw to various privacy organizations focused on Internet privacy policy.

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Personally, that's a big security flaw, how does something along those lines just slip right through development and the scope of the project itself? The owner of Kik has apologized numerous times on the website where this was reported, but, that I'm aware of, it was never solved and may now be too little too late.

• Read more about Kik's plea to RIM
• Read up on the responses to Kik's security flaw

[David Lam's Law Blog]

Is RIM's reaction surprising to anyone? Really, after reviewing the posts on the link, RIM had to distance themselves for liability reasons in my opinion. The fact that KIK is saying that they will work on a fix doesn't wash. At one point, I believe they said they had a fix but by then it was already too late.

Secondly, if you read between the lines from the corporate response from KIK, they knew about this issue prior to launch and chose for the backlash as opposed to fixing it first.

this is a very touchy subject i brought it up in beta zone and i was told i could be kick out of the group . so i will have to say rim kinda being a bully about it

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Originally Posted by mike morris

this is a very touchy subject i brought it up in beta zone and i was told i could be kick out of the group . so i will have to say rim kinda being a bully about it

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Mike,

Are you talking about the KIK beta zone? Or Rim's. I think if you read the responses if you haven't already, including KIK's response as far as damage control is, there's more going on than KIK is letting out. Filing a copyright lawsuit gets expensive and has a potential for negative backlash. This wasn't done on a whim on RIM's behalf

While I agree with JoshJamie, I also agree with Mike.. RIM is being a bit of a bully here.. Kik was getting big, but not anywhere NEAR as big as BBM.. So doing it in the manner they did is more offensive than the fact that they did it which doesn't really bother me. I just think they should have gone another route with the takedown's and what-not.

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Originally Posted by joshjamie

Mike,

Are you talking about the KIK beta zone? Or Rim's. I think if you read the responses if you haven't already, including KIK's response as far as damage control is, there's more going on than KIK is letting out. Filing a copyright lawsuit gets expensive and has a potential for negative backlash. This wasn't done on a whim on RIM's behalf

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sorry for not being clear i meant black berry beta zone im not taking anyone side but i think kik is a pretty neat app .

I can see why RIM is doing it now, its funny how this story is all over the web and that crucial security flaw is being left out of the reports . .. makes you wonder who is holding the strings . . .

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Originally Posted by thbassman

I can see why RIM is doing it now, its funny how this story is all over the web and that crucial security flaw is being left out of the reports . .. makes you wonder who is holding the strings . . .

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I noticed the same thing.. I wondered why there wasn't more to the story than people knew, that's why I did my research before posting ;)

I have also heard recently that Ted (Owner of Kik) was a part of the BBM Development team; thus a conflict of interest.