Many of us love watching cartoons because of their funny antics, thrilling stories, colorful graphics and nuggets of wisdom. Did you know that you can enjoy your favorite cartoons online? KissCartoon is a website that is populated with thousands of animated multimedia from the United States and beyond. You can also get movies, television shows and anime within this website. Best of all, this content can be streamed at absolutely no cost!
Due to its fantastic variety of content, KissCartoon is an excellent resource for kids or parents that want to find entertainment for their little ones. While it is a treasure trove of kid-friendly entertainment, there are suspicions about the safety of this website and a cloud of doubt about its legality. We dove deep into the website and reviewed user opinions to bring you this comprehensive review answering the question, is kisscartoon safe?
The Characteristics of KissCartoon
To understand the safety or legality of this website, we describe its main characteristics for you below:
Content provided
KissCartoon is an online portal populated with a massive variety of cartoons, movies, TV episodes and anime that you can enjoy without paying a cent. Much of this content is available in High Definition (HD) and can be experienced from any device using your favorite browser. You can find the material very quickly because this website is well organized. You can find the latest trending content intuitively for enjoyment with your child!
Ownership structure
KissCartoon is wholly owned and operated by the Kiss Anime Network, an international media company that originally hosted this site in Vietnam. Over time, the company diversified its hosting by installing servers all over the world in nations that do not enforce copyright laws. The Kiss Anime Network also hosts a collection of other websites that all contain entertainment such as Korean Drama TV episodes, Manga and comics from the U.S.A. KissCartoon and its related original websites were all developed approximately ten years ago. Today, they are only accessible through clones or mirror sites. Throughout this time, millions of people have visited KissCartoon to enjoy the child-friendly entertainment for free!
Controversial Past
In 2017, the United States ambassador to Vietnam requested that Kiss Anime Network officials be arrested for criminal prosecution. The officials were not extradited but the original KissCartoon website was shut down. To keep the millions of viewers consistently entertained, a collection of new clone or mirror sites were generated. They used different Universal Resource Locators (URLs) from the original and are most likely administered by the team behind the unique website. To date, nobody knows who manages KissCartoon’s mirror websites. These sites are accessible through the following URLs:
- su
- co
- org
- me
- mobi
- io
- bz
You can use these mirror site links to gain direct access to the KissCartoon website and continue to watch content for free.
Caution regarding mirror sites
A mirror is an exact copy of a website that provides the same interface and content as the original. Everything in the unique website including its logo, design, content and domain name is precisely the same. The only difference between the original and its mirror is the domain extension. Mirror sites are like disposable doors into the database of the original website. Due to their nature, mirror sites do not emphasize security so their frameworks are fraught with risk. For this reason, it is always essential to have your antivirus software activated while accessing a mirror site.
How safe is KissCartoon?
KissCartoon provides a lot of fantastic content for its viewers but unfortunately, it is not safe. Seeing as you do not have to pay a single coin to watch the material contained within, this website is financed through advertisements. These ads appear in the form of pop-ups and redirects that are loaded into your browser using Javascript files. Malicious hackers can insert viruses into these Javascript files and infect your computer whenever you activate or click on these ads. Within KissCartoon, the advertisements are not controlled using an authority such as Google so they pose a significant risk to your digital safety.
Visiting KissCartoon is risky because hackers are using unique strategies to generate revenue by infecting your computer. They are loading cryptocurrency mining software into the Javascript ads and whenever your computer loads an advertisement, your digital resources are utilized to mine cryptocurrency for the hackers. This causes the machine to slow down significantly and negatively affects your productivity.
Notably, these hackers are often not directly associated with KissCartoon but they take advantage of this website’s weak security framework so as to infect users’ devices through the poisoned ads. In this way, KissCartoon is not safe for you to visit at all!
Is KissCartoon legal?
Now that you know KissCartoon is not safe, the next question is whether it is legal. There are pirated cartoons and anime movies in its massive repository of content. This entertainment website along with its partner sites is not licensed to distribute the material that they host. This contravenes numerous copyright rules and regulations. As a result, the original KissCartoon website and its mirror sites have been shut down multiple times.
In a bid to stay online, whenever one site is shut down, the KissCartoon developers immediately activate a new clone on a different server using a unique URL link to keep the services running. These mirrors pose an even higher risk to you because they are full of viruses and nobody knows who runs them. Curiously, these mirror sites usually appear with the same domain name but with different domain suffixes for example KissCartoon.io and KissCartoon.bz. With this mind, KissCartoon is clearly an illegal, free multimedia streaming website.
Legal alternatives to KissCartoon
Seeing as your computer can become infected by viruses when you visit KissCartoon and the website is also illegal, it is always a good idea to visit legal, safe alternatives to this website. The alternative sites do not pose any viral risk and can be accessed using any device you have. They are also free to use because they don’t require payment at all. Here are some of these legal alternatives for you:
- Hoopla
- IMDb TV
- The Internet Archive
- Movies Found Online
- Pluto TV
Free legal Alternatives to KissCartoon for you
Hoopla
Did you know that your library card can enable you to watch free movies on the Internet? Hoopla is an online service through which you can watch a vast variety of free films, TV shows and documentaries using your library card.
For this to work successfully, your library needs to have a particular infrastructure in place so that your card can be recognized successfully by the Hoopla sign-in portal. After that, you can gain direct access to visual material, e-Books, music, comics and audiobooks as well. Just like a library, you can borrow the digital media, watch it and then return by a set deadline. It is a natural, legal and free way to get entertained!
IMDb TV
Everyone knows that IMDb is the most authoritative website in terms of delivering information about movies, celebrities, award shows and Hollywood trivia. This online service provides trailers, showtime schedules, ticketing and critical reviews of your favorite movies.
Furthermore, IMDb offers free TV show streaming services where you can enjoy episodes ranging from cartoons and comedy to action from the comfort of your home for free! If you want to catch up with your favorite blockbuster actors, IMDb TV also provides movies at no extra cost. It is a reliable, legal and free way to consume entertainment today!
The Internet Archive
What if you could visit a digital museum that contains TV shows and movies from the past that you can stream or download for free? The Internet Archive provides exactly this for you. It is a very unique website that hosts TV episodes and films contributed by users. It also contains material sourced from public domains on the World Wide Web (www) so you can view or download any content that you find there. This makes the Internet Archive an outstanding source of free, legal entertainment material that you can watch on-demand!
Movies Found Online
Echoing its title to the letter, Movies Found Online is a one-stop shop for all your film streaming needs! This website allows you to watch movies online for free so it is an excellent alternative to KissCartoon. It presents links to free movies that are hosted in other sites around the Internet. Majority of the content in this website is made independently so you are not contravening any copyright laws by watching it for free. There are documentaries, short films and even movies on offer for you. As such, Movies Found Online provides intriguing motion pictures without charging you a penny.
Pluto TV
If you enjoy surfing through channels on cable TV, Pluto TV is an online streaming site that will provide the same experience. It provides cartoons, TV shows, movies and documentaries all at the click of a button. Pluto TV stands out because it allows for a section where you can stream multimedia on demand.
It also provides another part where you can tune into more than 250 channels and watch according to preset time schedules. You can enjoy this material for free and you don’t even have to create an account to do it!
Overall
KissCartoon is packed full of child-friendly movies, shows and anime but it is unsafe to use. This website has been pulled down a couple of times due to copyright infringement and is infested with viruses. Thankfully, we have described a number of alternatives that you can explore. They offer great entertainment for free that you can enjoy at no risk of having your device infected by malware!