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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

#441

Post by lproven »

mindcrime wrote: post #54

Well... I don't know that they ever officially released a protocol spec, but libpurple implements ICQ so at least enough of the protocol was reverse engineered or understood somehow to allow for OSS clients. So I suppose somebody could start from there and build a compatible server. Of course it might wind up only being compatible with Pidgin and other libpurple based clients, and the market for this is probably appr…

When the Russians bought ICQ from the dying AOL and relaunched it, the same protocol was still available and Pidgin worked. But they turned it off after a while, and what a shock, everyone left.

I contacted the company, suggested they bridged it to other protocols, and pointed them at FOSS code that would let them do it. I got a snarky email back saying that what I proposed was impossible -- even though others had done it before. Idiots.

-- 73187508

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#442

Post by lproven »

mindcrime wrote: post #415
xp84 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been working on other ones. You can set up an AIM server, too.

I have to admit, the thought has crossed my mind that it would be kinda cool to build a messaging server with support for ICQ protocol, MSN's protocol, OSCAR (AIM), Yahoo's protocol, etc. Maybe throw in XMPP too. And in reading up on OSCAR[1] just now, I only just found out that ICQ did use OCSAR as well (at least according to Wikipedia). I never knew that. I had always thought OSCAR was only used by AIM. Live and le…

A team has reverse engineered MSN and launched their own MSN IM server:

https://escargot.chat/

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#443

Post by kazmer_ak »

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…

Man, that's how I felt about MSN Messenger and XFire and Google Talk...

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#444

Post by lproven »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #245

Back in the day, messaging was pretty awesome. You could use an app like Pidgin and pretty much talk to anyone no matter what color their bubbles were. Today, I have to have one app for all the different ways to get ahold of someone. It's pretty annoying, but we did it to ourselves. Yay.

Try Ferdium, RAMbox, or Station.

All FOSS.

https://ferdium.org/

https://rambox.app/

https://getstation.com/

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#447

Post by kolistivra »

ssfrr wrote: post #325
whycome wrote: post #254

For everyone proudly displaying their old ICQ numbers, just be aware that there are still sites that have some of the info tied to the numbers archived (presumably what was made public/status). So, there may be some easily-access publicly identifiable information that you don't want associated with your current HN username. (I just did a search and I found that my old icq# had a phone number linked to it)

just googling didn't come up with anything for me. were there specific sites you found info on?

I'm curious too!

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#448

Post by teajunky »

mathrawka wrote: post #431
bradfitz wrote: post #386

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. :)

Mirabilis contacted you? I worked on some ICQ software in high school, and was the maintainer of large user base ICQ clone. I still own the domain: licq.org Never got a single job offer, guess they saw my code and went running away ;)

Thanks for licq. This was my favourite client.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#449

Post by ValentineC »

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.

20896111. (I think I had a shorter one that I deleted, back when I was trying it out for the first time, before I had online friends, and didn't know the value of length.)

RIP, ICQ.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#450

Post by kinow »

I was trying a few old passwords, but looks like my account was deleted, probably due to inactivity.

I saw someone commenting about accounts being deleted due to inactivity, so first I tried to find a way to search old accounts. Found in a website this link: https://icq.im/$YOUR_ICQ_NUMBER/en

Replace that by your ID. I checked some of the IDs in the comments here, and you can see the user name. But mine just shows [deleted], and the old description I wrote years, and years ago :-)

Searching I also ended up on this icq.com web page, that looks right out of Geocities: https://icq.com/cf/ate/externals/ma00b.htm

No idea what's that tool, and no way I am downloading it. But it's amazing to imagine what would be the "created" and "last modified" stats of the files being served there.

Thanks ICQ.

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