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ICQ will stop working from June 26

icq.com

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Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#381

Post by robohydrate »

jedberg wrote: post #14

This makes me sad. I mean, I haven't logged in in about 20 years now, and couldn't if I wanted to (don't have the password or access to the email address). But I had a low five digit user number, and built a lot of relationships on ICQ (some of which continue today!). It was my main method of electronic communication in college. I had romantic relationships live and die on ICQ. Another reminder of how things change o…

58843787 Managed to remember it along with my password from 20+ years ago and it allowed me to login! Really amazing actually it's been around this long.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#384

Post by geek_at »

robohydrate wrote: post #381
jedberg wrote: post #14

This makes me sad. I mean, I haven't logged in in about 20 years now, and couldn't if I wanted to (don't have the password or access to the email address). But I had a low five digit user number, and built a lot of relationships on ICQ (some of which continue today!). It was my main method of electronic communication in college. I had romantic relationships live and die on ICQ. Another reminder of how things change o…

58843787 Managed to remember it along with my password from 20+ years ago and it allowed me to login! Really amazing actually it's been around this long.

same! 97910162 for some reason I even printed it out with a lable maker and put it on my safe.. it's not the password but might be a good diversion

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#386

Post by bradfitz »

489151 here.

I even got a job offer from ICQ back in the day. One of the perks they offered was a small ICQ number ending in zeros.

I didn't take the job offer because I was in high school, though, and wasn't even looking for a job. It's unclear whether they knew that. I'd written some companion program and put it on the internet and they'd found it and were impressed. :)

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#387

Post by fragmede »

101008 wrote: post #290
jmbwell wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being reachable only from a PC at home… man. Now that I miss. The whole lifestyle of having a clear distinction between being at the computer and not. Status messages for a time when “away” was a state of being you ever were . Coming back to see whether your crush had messaged you. Simpler times for sure. Before we even had “wi-fi!”

I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…

you reminded me that we used to pay for Internet access by the hour. You'd pay $X for one hour of Internet use, so you'd go online, do a thing and then disconnect to save money. local vs remote for email was such a different time. you'd have a fat client on your laptop, and you'd do a bunch of writing offline, before connecting, having the program sync, and then disconnect.

how times have changed!

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#388

Post by amlib »

nogridbag wrote: post #300
jedberg wrote: post #14

This makes me sad. I mean, I haven't logged in in about 20 years now, and couldn't if I wanted to (don't have the password or access to the email address). But I had a low five digit user number, and built a lot of relationships on ICQ (some of which continue today!). It was my main method of electronic communication in college. I had romantic relationships live and die on ICQ. Another reminder of how things change o…

I just logged in for the first time in over 25 years a few weeks ago. I found https://web.icq.com/ which does not require an email address: only the ID and password. And back then I used a single password for everything. And it worked! All my old online friends from my childhood were there, my profile message, etc. While most were offline, a few showed up as online and I quickly messaged them! But my excitement died…

Thanks, I had no idea what my password was but trying one of the old ones I constantly used back in the day worked :)

I also didn't remember my ICQ# but luckly I found it on a backup from an old website I used to have.

There was also a page where me and my friends were trying to pool togheter our numbers and incentivize people to use it, back when ICQ was being demolished by MSN and AIM... it was a very grassroots attempt that ammounted to nothing lol, but oh whell, at least we tried :(

You served me well 177024717

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#389

Post by galdosdi »

dark-star wrote: post #329
ssfrr wrote: post #45

1303789 Serious question - why do so many people remember our ICQ numbers? I don’t remember what user-facing function it served. Was that actually the identifier we shared with people to connect? I suppose it also came at a time for a lot of us where things seemed to wedge into our brains more easily.

I remember the phone number of my great aunt who lived in East Germany. It was a 12-digit number (including country code). We called her once, maybe twice a year, and usually my mother was dialling. I was maybe around 8 or 9 at the time (it was around 1988). I cannot even remember the birthdays of people close to me, let alone any phone numbers except my own. But I still remember that f*king 12-digit international ph…

I still remember the phone number of this girl I wanted to date in high school, 867-5309

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#390

Post by iszomer »

humanfromearth9 wrote: post #337
larodi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4125222 I still remember it but not the pass

42731249. I still remember this shit without any hesitation, incl. password. And have not used the service for 20 years either. And then, I continuously forget the name of colleagues I see at least every other day.

13686723.

That feeling is mutual.

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