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ICQ Banishes Children Under 13
BubbaFett writes: "I received a GnomeICU message this morning from UIN #1 stating:
'To address a U.S. law aimed at protecting children's privacy, we cannot permit children under age 13 to use the ICQ service. Your profile presently shows your age as under 13. Therefore, we will close your account within 48 hours. If you are under 13, you may open an account only after your 13th birthday. We regret any inconvenience.' ICQ's privacy policy stating the same thing is here. I guess I should go change my age in the profile."
Update: 07/01 17:33 PM by michael : Several readers are confusing COPA, the Child Online Protection Act, which was an internet censorship law passed after the Communications Decency Act was struck down, and has itself been ruled unconstitutional, with the similarly-acronymed COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which regulates what websites can do to invade the privacy of children under 13, and which has not been struck down nor even challenged.
I recieved a system message when I first signed up.
Funny....You don't even have to have a job to get a credit card in Canada. All you have to do is go to school (University or College).
Plus, age doesn't matter. If you aren't in school get someone to co-sign. If you are in school, they don't care if you are 16.
FunkyDemon
While this of course will not stop 12 year olds from using ICQ, it will prevent profiles from saying that users are 12 years old. This will in a way increase the privacy of children under 13, as it will prevent them involuntarily giving their age out online.
And you don't even have a slashdot account ! Wow.
American companies, due to COPPA, are not allowed to gather information from children under 13. Not just Americans under thirteen... anyone under 13.
:)
I ask myself why the US government feels itself inclined to protect the privacy of children all over the world. All I've seen from COPPA so far though are infringements on my privacy, as various sites across the web have demanded me to disclose my age and country of residence. The means erected to protect the privacy of American children under 13 is actually infringing on same privacy of American people over 13 and of all non-Americans. The cure seems to be much worse than the disease here, as I see more and more often with new laws in the US... IMHO, YMMV, IANAL, [insert standard disclaimer]
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
15 year olds are not limited to spending around $20. I am 15 and in the last 6 months probably spent 20 times that amount over the internet. Whats more, this is money I have earnt, not from my parents (who for the record are not anything close to rich). I know lots of people with jobs and with no monetary obligations it is all largely disposable income.
And why not? A large majority of under 16s are vastly more technologically aware than a large percentage of the population. I'm sure you'd love to know I advise several companies on their IT systems and...ISPs. You can't put a cut off age limit on knowledge, especially with something like the internet and computers.~~~
Sigmenation fault.
I find it hard to believe that ICQ can possible consider the information filled in the user-info to be reliable!
What about children under the age of 13 that are located outside the united states, surely they should still be able to use ICQ. Also the age box doesn't cater for people over the age of 100, which is ageist as well.
Well next time ^~cutebaby~^ (age 18) messages me I'll have no idea whether she's a deceptive 6 year old or not :(( - i'll sue if they send me to prison
Per their terms of service, Yahoo! doesn't allow users under 18 to post personal ads. However, a lot of the non-porn ads state that the woman's age is 18 in the header, and then the first sentence of the body is "hi im actually 16/f but they wouldn't let me put 16."
Yeah, but if you contact one of those "16 year olds" she'll look/sound like a 25-45 and want your credit card number before talking to or visiting you.
If "she" dosn't want money i'd assume she's a federal agent.
- bridgette
Basicaly what the US goverment is slowly doing is attempting to bypass the laws of darwanism.
Good morning, Troll... well, much of the spelling does reek of temporal starvation... Darwin's laws are fine for genetic programming, but nobody authoritative seriously expects them to work in reality. That's why we have neo-Darwinists, neo-catastrophists, and so forth.
Darwin's own criteria for falsification of his theory were met decades ago, and the evidence dismissing his theory just keep piling up. For examples, there are (TIME cover stories notwithstanding) fewer and fewer "transitional" cadidates among the billions of fossils so far unearthed; more and more polystrate fossils and out-of-sequence "index" fossils; vertebrate fish (and the lampreys that live on them) have now been found in Cambrian rock (in China), extending the range of vertebrates to practically the entire "geologic column".
A new theory is required; one which requires you to bulletproof your children well before they might be exposed to Nasty Stuff.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
what I'm looking forward to is a fully distributed system of communication where every client is also a sort of server
Well, IRC is pretty close to that, except that it is a network of servers with a network of clients attached to them. Still pretty distributed though.
The problem of fully distributing a chat network is how to deal with identities. How do you stop people from taking over other's identities, or sniffing all messages sent to a certain person? (hmm... public key encryption! answered my own question...)
But then how do you deal with discovery of other people? With no centralized server, it could take a VERY long time from the point when someone logs on to when you can see they are part of the network. Gnutella has this problem now.
- Isaac =)
You mean like email
--
A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
Actually, it's basic human WRONG.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Try registering with an age that is less than 18 - You will get the following URL:
http://edit.yahoo.com/config/register
Dont be so cynical, not everyone on Slashdot is just trying to cause trouble!
not to mention that most of us who have credit cards would *never* give them out online....d'you really think people are stupid enough to give out cc's for *age verification* ???
there's no way for you to say "I don't want X knowing I'm on."
someone could be on, but you wouldn't be guaranteed of knowing it
I posted another message mentioning your second point, but your first point gave me an idea to solve it...
When a person adds you to their Buddy List thing, it doesn't actually add you to *theirs*. Instead, your client adds them to your Notify List, whuch means that when you log on it sends out a message to all the people on your list. This also allows *you* to manage who knows you are on or not. Unless you have a static IP number, it would be difficult for others to track you.
- Isaac =)
In a related article.... GTE, Pac Bell and other phone companies have now released a statement, "No Children under the age of 13 may use the Telephone." Every time you call you will now have to enter in your birthdate into the numeric pad.
Yes, but you are then asking for Parents to actualy raise there own kids, or for the childeren to use common sense in their pursuit of cybersex. Either way, you are asking alot, at least from the average American. Why else would we "need" such a law? (that's either of them)
Also realize that the average person doesn't think about how much information that they give out in a random conversation, not their real name or address, but often enough to find one or the other. People are just to trusting on the internet because they Think they are untracable, safe from the outside world. We all know how true that is.
What should be done then? Well, why on Mother Earth does ICQ list your IP number? How about some guidelines for newbies on what might not be good to put in your profile? How about actualy increasing the security of the network to help secure the privacy of the user?
No, too much work. Law says we only have to protect the kids, so, we'll just deal with them.
Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...
When I was 11 or 12 (I think), I received a credit card application mailed to me from the bank of montreal (a bank in Canada), who later mailed me saying they screwed up and I was too young.
-- no
I've used ICQ for a couple of years now (not by choice but because it's the most convenient way to stay in touch with a lot of people I know.
The interface was a million times better before AOL took over. It was very intuitive, but after AOL took it they mostly seemed to bulk add space for advertising, a few extra redundant features as well as half-incorporating the web, and they didn't seem to care about code maintenance at all. The result was a buggy, horrible interface.
If you have to use ICQ, try to get either an older version of it (on the early side of 0.9x), or use an ICQ clone. There are lots of clones listed on freshmeat, but I'm not sure if many would compile for a Windows box. Alternatively you could try something like Odigo which talks to ICQ and looks quite cool. Last time I tried it it still crashed a bit and the window wasn't very resizable, but otherwise it was great.
It's time for an international body to govern the internet, not just America.
It'd better not be the UN. They're too close to the Articles of Confederation and the Confederate States of America, neither of which is around today.
--
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
that was the first thing which cross my mind also....
They've made it illegal to lie to AOL about who you are?
Yup, it's been illegal to lie about who you are for quite a long time. It's called "fraud".
If AOL doesn't like it screw em. If the US legal system doesn't like it screw them too. They can't touch me anyway.
AMERICA reached into NORWAY and threw Jon Johansen into jail. Please check your attitude at the door. (No, I don't think it was right, and I hate my country for doing it. But morality doesn't change history.)
--
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
Then that is a brain-dead implementation. If you don't want the packet, it shouldn't have any effect in keeping your connection up. Should other people's technology be constrained by that? If Linux TCP/IP stacks were to cause some vendors router to consistently lock up should we ban Linux? Or should the vendor fix their stuff?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I think you are wrong. I dont know about the law-issues and stuff but if you install ICQ2Ka/b (win) (or whatever it is =)) You have to accept some conditions, one of them is that you have to be over 13 years of age.
Any lawyers care to comment?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I have never had a version of ICQ which wasn't Beta (perhaps I did _ages_ ago). I don't think ICQ take "Beta" to actually mean Beta at all... for example, how easy is it to find some way of reporting a bug? I've looked through the ICQ menus and webpages to report a 'feature' and I still haven't found an address...
I see no way Mirabillis can enforce this without major changes in thier practices
Major changes like deleting accounts listed as younger than 13? Not a difficult feat. Hell, 1 minute of coding, 1 minute of testing, 2 minutes of repair (if you're me, and screw up alot), and you're done. Major changes? I think not.
-Jer
I think you missed the gag!
Though your post illustrates just what a problem these things are.
I'm also willing to bet there are a LOT of people out there OVER 18 who don't have credit cards. I know 2 people, and I don't KNOW that many people, ones in his early 40's, the other is in his 50's, neither have credit cards. One is down to the fact that until recently he was homeless, the other has always paid cash for stuff. This whole credit card verification thing is such a STUPID and incredibly inaccurate method of verifiying age.
---
so this should not affect me.
That's wrong. If you under 13 and use ICQ anywhere in the world, this will affect you. ICQ is not allowed to collect information about children under 13 as long as ICQ is owned by a company based in the US. It doesn't matter where you are, if you use services provided by an American company, American laws can affect you.
I just reinstalled ICQ after a format, and on the little welcome to ICQ message it now says:IMPORTANT NOTICE
Please note that the ICQ service is not for use by children under 13 years of age. If it comes to ICQ's attention through reliable means that a registered user is a child under 13 years of age, ICQ will cancel that user's account.
Also please note that the ICQ software, as with most Internet applications, is vulnerable to various security issues and hence should be considered unsecured. By using the ICQ Software and the Internet in general, you may be subject to various risks, including among others:
[Snip]
European Union ICQ users understand and consent to the processing of personal information in the United States.
http://www.icq.com/legal/usenote.html
---
seumas.com
I've set up a page for this in http://irssi.org/dchat/, the current idea paper is a bit old however, the flood routing can't work with huge networks :) Dividing the network to smaller groups would be better.
But a child of say, 13 through 17 can?
I really am beginning to dislike this under 13 stuff
I roleplay alot so that hurt me big when 10 chars of mine were locked from Yahoo for having ages marked with ?? or under 13
Really this is a sad time on the Internet.
-Sarkdas (I got the blues..)
I'm also willing to bet there are a LOT of people out there OVER 18 who don't have credit cards.
Not to mention that there are pleny of people under 18 who have credit cards, making it a totally useless form of age verification.
I'd be careful with using that card on-line. Visa check cards usually don't have the same "protections" as real Visa cards. My wife bought me a CDR for Christmas from UCD with a Visa check card and it came delivered damaged. The box was fine, they just shipped a damaged unit. It took us like 3 months to clear that up, because the check cards don't have the same features as real Visa cards as far as consumer protection. Your's might, but I'd check it out...
I wonder how much longer it will take for common usage to make it a word (kinda like ain't is in the dictionary now) and all you spelling nazi's have to find something new to obsess about.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.
No.
The protected classes are limited to those explicitly listed in the law by Congress. There may be state or local laws that cover more areas, such as sexual preference. In some areas, such as hiring or lending money, a practice can be prohibited if it has a "disparate impact" on a protected class.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Human history is largely a story of what those whose rights were acknowledged and protected did to those whose rights were denied. All peole have natural rights which they are born with. However our society pretends that only people over a certain age whose skin is a certain color and who only belong to certain religous sects and make over a certain ammount of money truly have rights. Others may enjoy priviliges which are much like what the chosen few have as rights, but these are priviliges. They can be stripped away whenever they become inconvenient or troublesome to those who have power. I believe that everyone who can read and write should have the right to vote, regardless of age. Now before you assume I'm some stupid kid you should know that I'm 28 years old and a college graduate. I think that the young should be able to vote because their rights are not currently being protected. The young are trampled upon and exploited at every turn. Elected officials respond to votes. They are very much aware of who votes for them and who doesn't. They are very careful to act on the behalf of those groups whose members vote. The young cannot vote, therefore the govenrmnent will never act on their behalf. Instead the government will use them as scapegoats for problems, both real and made up for election day. If the young could vote, things like the CDA or COPA would never see the light of day. Laws such as these which are supposed to "potect children," aren't about that at all. They're about censorship and nothing more. Their creators and backers use the idea of protecting children to justify the stifling of information that they fild personally offensive, usually on superstitious grounds. These are the same kinds of people who have caused oppression throughout the history of mankind. One must be forever vigilant against them and always willing to fight back and never surrender. Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
netstat -a
This leads to one of two scenarios:
1) You're chatting with the avearge user on ICQ. They won't know if netstat, so if your IP is hidden, they'll never know it (not from ICQ, anyway), and if it's not hidden, they'll have no idea what to do with it.
2) You're chatting with does know about netstat, which means that whether you tell ICQ to hide your IP or not, they can find out what it is.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
So, exactly which federal agency has enforcement responsibility for this law? I don't know where you got your info but do you really think the feds are gonna slap FELONY charges on a 12 year old for lying about his age on ICQ? I work for a municipal LEA and I can just imagine the laughter if you called us attempting to report this bs...
I have no feet</SNIP>
If you have no feet, go get rapped.
No, it's not a hoax. The story has been out for some time and was actually first reported May 5th. UIN #1 is the ICQ server, and is used for sending system messages to clients. The message is legit, as many users have received similar messages before.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Forget June 7th, the story was first reported on May 5th!
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Recently my 11-year old son came to me and said that he couldn't access his personal profile on Yahoo. He simply wanted to update it since it indicated he was still 9 years old (He had signed up for it when he was 9). They wanted him to get his parent to approve. So I checked it out and and put in my username in the required fields, etc. Then it asked me for my credit card number to verify my age! Their disclaimer indicated there were no charges, it was just for verification, blah blah blah. We decided to create a whole new account instead. It seems you can't do that without a credit card number either.
My son has a Netscape e-mail account now instead. And when he signed up for we indicated that he was 18. I don't like to teach my child to lie, but I think its important for him to realize that he doesn't need to comply with every stupid regulation and beaurocratic nonsense that comes along. The government and/or megacorporations should not entitled to stick their nose into every nook and cranny of our lives!
Actually, no. There are no UINs below 1001, aside from the almost-theoretical UIN 1. Mirabilis staff uins have 5 digits, usually ending in 4 zeroes.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
It's almost the same thing with registering a free web page with most hosting sevices, only you have to be 14 years of age, if you aren't just change your age, I was born on August 1966 :-)
poop.
There are also a few questionable UINs in the 4-digit range. Don't ask me how they got them and unfortunately I forget what the numbers are.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
This has absolutely no impact. Every child below 13 will create a new account stating he's at least 25. There is no way to validate that, so although AOL seems to have taken a step to please the DOJ, it will not stop young childs from using ICQ.
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
A distributed approach is not a bad idea. However, as Gnutella, it would produce huge amounts of traffic. Gnutella needs about 1 KB per connection with another node per second, so it's not exactly suited for your average modem user. And that just for instant messaging, would be overkill. Maybe the traffic could be reduced.
Any new instant messaging system that is not pushed by a major corporation will probably have a hard time being established. OTOH, it would give the opportunity to create a clean protocol from scratch, different from the crappy one ICQ uses (even the developers say so, IIRC, they never thought it would become that huge). With built-in cryptography for privacy, authentication techniques to reduce spam, a good free C library implementing it to have it on all platforms and other goodies.
Yes, it was. What does that have to do with COPPA, the law we're concerned with here?
Yes, they would. American companies, due to COPPA, are not allowed to gather information from children under 13. Not just Americans under thirteen... anyone under 13.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Hey, I was I was as 'smart' as you. I started reading /. 3 years ago when I was 23.....
/. didn't exist (how old is /.?) or at least wasn't available to the average 12 year old.
It's all relative you know.
When you were 12
Johan V.
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.
ICQ is NOT a basic human right.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
I'm sorry, but isn't this the same law that was spoken of in this slashdot article, the law that got struck down??? I don't know of any other law that would cause AOL to do this. Are they banning people under 13 from AIM too?
Ah, so, you are agreeing w/ the polititians on this issue, "Screw the kids, they can't vote us out anyway!" Besides, if we don't control them now and get them properly brain-washed then they might not uphold the status quo when they grow up! So, to hell with the rights of the young and stupid, let their parents vote people into office to bring the childeren up right!
Face it, it still sounds bad...
They can't vote because we say they can't. We don't educate them, we don't listen to them, and we don't let them be counted when the time comes. So, all that anyone under the age of 18 in the US of A can do is bitch about how messed up things are going to be when they finaly get their chance. And, from recent experiance, we should listen to what they are saying...
Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...
You're a week late to the party and you've brought a stupid present.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
>> This I do not doubt. But I am surprised to see
:)
>> that you write lowercase 'i' in place of
>> uppercase 'I'. Surely you are mature enough
>> now to be an 'I' rather than an 'i'? ('i' is
>> for the 12-yr-olds who can't ICQ).
surely you realize that IIRC english is the only major language to capitolize "I" when used to refer to ones self. whether i follow standard english rules or not does nothing to determine whether i can make decisions better than someone who does. that has nothing to do with it.
>> Not all of us adults in the USA are idiots.
i didnt say that
i would agree with one of the others in this thread...if you pay taxes or are eligable for other gov't programs to take things away from you then you should be able to vote after demonstrating the knowledge nessessary to make good decisions.
maybe 18+ votes are guarenteed, but under 18 you have to pass some sort of test?
June 7th! More than three weeks ago!
---
seumas.com
I don't use ICQ very often, but when I did it was extremely useful to me. I started using ICQ back in 1997 when I was doing some work for a client over the 'net. It made sense, as at the time it was near real-time and private. After I have finished the job, I continued to use it as it seemed a good way of keeping in touch with people.
Then, suddenly, about 2 months ago, I recieved an e-mail from mirabilis or ICQ or whatever they call themselves now, informing me that as my user details listed me as being under 13, I would have my account deleted within 28 days if I did not change it, or within 2 days or my next log on to the ICQ network. Sure enough, the next time I logged on, I was messaged with a very simialr message. Being a linux user as I was, there was no way to change these details in the user directory using the client I was using, and I couldn't find anything obvious on the web site, so having no other option, I left it.
And so my account was deleted soon after. I haven't opened another one, partly because of all the hassles of telling everyone my new number, and partly because I don't agree with a company forcing the laws of one country on to a citizen of another (I live in the UK). Nowadays, anyone who wants to contact me is referred to a BBS I frequent, and told to find me there. Unfortunate, but that's the way it is.
--
Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last... This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
I'm a member of the Angels Online program. A group that lurks in chatrooms and other areas where sex offenders like to hide and stalk women and children...anyone in fact. We usually keep an eye out for anyone who is having problems and then help them to use the many tools at their disposal and hunt these people back to the ISP.
In my online profile on ICQ I list myself as a 11 year old and as a result, got the same message.
I see no way Mirabillis can enforce this without major changes in thier practices, but it's nice to see them try...feeble as the attempt may by, but it's a start.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
chrome at elltel dot net
When you live in a sick society, just about everything you do is wrong.
All UIN's under 100000 are employees/developers (and probably some friends) of mirabilis/AOL. For end users, it starts at 100000 on up. Although it still could be a hoax, well, someone open an account and say they are eleven or something and see what happens. It is on ICQ's web page, so who knows... Just wait and see.
That's what's really funny.... For some reason the US government keeps thinking that they can control the internet. Sometimes I wonder if Senators and Congressmen are even aware that the bandwidth doesn't stop at the border....
Then maybe kids should be given the vote.
-- iCEBaLM
I run a MOO which attracts a fair number of users under 13, so I'm dealing with this issue myself right now. Chat rooms are classified as a high risk activity, since the child can choose to publically disclose information about themselves, so we basically can't allow 13 year olds to join without verifiable parental consent. And seeing as this is being run completely by volunteers out of our own pockets, we really can't provide any such service. This law is designed for commercial services and should have the resources, but screws the people who run similar services non-commercially.
So, are we going to block users under 13, or risk being sued and/or shut down? (No Ansible users who may be reading this who are under 13, this isn't a threat. We'll work something out. It's just a pain).
This all sounds vaguely familiar to the use-SSN-as-your- concept.. SSNs were only supposed to be a national ID value and used for nothing else.. but try and convince your Bureau of Motor Vehicles, College or even orkplace of that fact. My SSN is printed on my DL, it was my ID value at school and part of it is used as a employeeID. Nowadays, with privacy issues coming to the forefront and things like identity theft becoming more commonplace these fools are moving away from such a stupid (and illegal?) practice. My SSN on my DL is now optional and I believe my former U is starting to generate new ID values for students. But the misuse went on for years beforehand.
Never stopped anyone using or requiring it, however... and at some places you could scream you do not need that information and still be denied some service or good. Kinda like places asking your phone number.. refuse to give it and at the least you get a snotty glare.
and what of the risk of yahoo even keeping this info on file? "oh yes, we are secure.. uh, what wu-ftpd process? oops..."
-'fester
This is a bold line
<i>This is an italic line</i>
am I just an idiot? wtf is wrong with this picture?
-'fester
Blockbusters???
All I had to show was a form of identification--so I showed my driver's license.
As for the commercial services part, I'm not sure if this is true or not. I saw something to that effect on one website about it, but I don't remember seeing it in the full text of the document (located at http://www.ftc.gov/os/1999/9910/64fr598 88.htm). It would make sense, since the main focus of this law seems to be people collecting and selling marketing information about children. However, having this information publically available on a non-commercial service is really just as dangerous to children, since the evil marketing agencies can still gather information that way, and individuals can use it to track down the child as well.
Ummm anyone ever try to add any low #'s to yer ICQ list, there are NO numbers below 1001, the first 1000 were used for testing purposes and never released to the public and never used by anyone on the Mirabilis staff other than to test.
...and by the way I have been using ICQ almost since it was started, I have a middle hundred thousand UIN, one of the few that hasn't been spoofed. So im not just some newbie trying to jack ya around.
moo.
The COPPA doesn't actually disallow access to these services by children under 13. It simply doesn't allow personal information to be collected without parental permission obtained through a verifiable source. ICQ probably considers it easier to just not allow access. OTOH, because AOL (in theory, at least) requires adult intervention for a child to get an account, it would not be subject to the same restrictions. IANAL. That's simply my interpretation of it.
>(I assume you can only access other users who are logged into the same system?)
i'm confused what you mean by this? with jabber you can talk to people who use jabber or irc, icq, aim, msn, yahoo etc. or if you want you can run a jabber server on a linux computer for your lan. to the icq user you appear to be just another icq user. after you have initially added the icq user to your roster he appears to be another jabber user. (basically anyways... in some cases odd things happen. for example jabber and icq support offline storage but aol instant messenger does not.)
actually it would not be difficult to implement the jabber protocol in the client. and you are right that this would make it easier in some ways. lessen the duty of sysadmins and the need to buy computers to use as a server.
however there are many some good reasons why this was not done yet. (some one will probably do in sooner or later in the next couple years just for the heck of it)
1) the jabber server allows for offline storage. not just of instant messanges but also of file transfers and images etc.
2) the jabber server simplifys things for end users. no need to install new modules for any new instant messanging protocol because your isp will do it for you. (not everyone is a hacker.)
3) it simplifies things for programmers. because they only need to know one protocol. (and one that actually makes sense as opposed to aol & icq etc). if you want a client that includes every possible protocol then install everbuddy. making a jabber client is really really easy. i made a crude one for testing purposes in shell script using netcat.
4) the jabber server provides a level of privacy because no one ever needs to know your ip address. So when you go onto irc through a jabber server you are not automatically going to start recieving port scans.
5) the jabber server holds user data. this is probably more usefull for me because i have switched clients a couple times but i have definitely appreciated it more than i imagined i would.
6) this is a minor point maybe but it makes the naming scheme much easier because isp's can give you the same jabber id as your email address. a "the client is the server" system becomes very complicated with dinamically allocated ip addresses.
hope this explains some of the jabber philosophy better.
error27@email.com
The problem then is that you can't know someone is online without them knowing that you know ;-). That could work, but in order for you to be connected to the network would mean someone could send out a "ping" to X (X being the user you wanna know is online). The ping could be a fake IM with a null message (and clients would most likely not display null messages, cause that's just a smart thing to do :P). If the message is accepted, you know they're on.
Of course, it could be implemented so that that wouldn't be possible, but with a distributed system I'm sure there would be *some* way of getting around it if you really wanted to. Especially because it's distributed...meaning messages would be going through your computer to get to someone elses...meaning you could "sniff" traffic to see if the person had sent out the message.
One Microsoft Way
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
That's a good point. It should also be taken into consideration that if ICQ really wanted to contact him, they would have done it through a system message and not with a message from a regular user.
Now I am 17 and since i really didn't care, I think, when I signed up for it, I stupidly put my real age (I'll never do that again!) It said that since I was under 18, I could not authorize somebody. So I signed up for another address and put that I was 25 and tried to authorize him. Since he wanted that username, we couldn't just sign up for a new account. Yahoo actually said "prove it!".
They said that I would need to provide them with a credit card number for them to know for sure if I was an adult! This really made me angry. They also said they would charge it a small amount and then credit it. This was absolutely rediculous. I wasn't going to give up a credit card number to total strangers (even if it is a wellknown company like Yahoo.)
The solution? My brother now has a hotmail account. (I don't want any flames about Microsoft hotmail. I used a hotmail account even before I had a real POP account and though sometimes it's down, it is ok)
The protocol and server just hit 1.0; this is a real, working system. Good clients are available for X11 and Win32, and are in progress on other platforms.
Jabber is interoperable with AIM, ICQ, and (soon, at least) IRC and e-mail. Interoperability is server-side, so that clients don't need any changes to support new protocols.
I've been using ICQ (Windows) for about 8 months, and it has had the same policy all the time. "Anyone under 13 cannot have an account. If you're found to be 13, you'll be terminated..." It may be new to the various GNU/Linux ports, but It's VERY old news for ICQ users in general.
-----------------------------------------
Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.
OK, so the thing from "UIN#1" is prolly a hoax. So? The article links to a page on icq's server that confirms it. Sure, that could be h4X0red too, but if so icq will realize this within, oh, say 5 minutes, considering how many flames they must be getting about now.
reading the rest of that page, most of it basically says "Our protocol is about as secure as screaming in the middle of times square. If u get screwed cause of that, its your problem." None of that is new, but to me their nonchalant attitude about having a bad protocol is worse than their new dumb unenforcable restriction.
The issue's been raised before, but is anyone actually working on a more secure messager? PGPCQ, perhaps?
wisconsin does not exist.
Further more, yes there are (at least, there WERE) ICQ numbers beneath 1,000. They were reserved for a number of friends of the software originators and the staff when it was wholly owned by Mirabilis. I'm not sure whether these still exist, but I imagine they do.
---
seumas.com
Being rather fed up with those girls have nothing better to do but keep trying to chat strangers up, I changed my info to show I was but a few months old. Bad mistake, got that message (about a month ago), changed my DOB back, that same day... and ICQ *still* deleted my account :-(
:-)
But at least it worked -> got a lot less strangers chatting me up now I have a 70 Million+ UIN... guess I don't show up on the head of whitepage searches anymore...
Karma makes sense. It makes a lot more sense if you add reincarnation.
Come on people, I never thought I'd see an ICQ hoax on /. ... Everybody knows it's trivial to spoof UINs....
I just did a quick search. I believe the lowest UIN is 10000. 10001 is Yuval Amir, the "product manager".
This smells more like a hoax by the minute, never mind what the privacy policy says.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Also, I have to wonder how this effects users outside of United States jurisdiction.
Well, it does. And that's what bothers me. Even though your profile says you're from outside the US, it doesn't make a difference.
A lot of places on the web doesn't seem to care about the rest of the world but USA. A lot of rules are different in my country. Still, I have to lie about a lot of things when I register and join stuff around the web.
"They are well within
their rights to cancel your account whenever they get the urge (even over something as dumb as this)."
many people don't realize ICQ is *not* legally obligated to continue providing their service; you've never paid them!
there's really no room to complain if you've never given them money to provide their services... if they choose to provide their services for free, they can choose who (not) to provide them to.
just because you invited a few friends over to your house for dinner, doesn't mean you have to let your entire neighborhood come in.
"one's rights end where infringing upon other's rights begin" -- however, if you're infrining upon somebody's *priveleges*, it's a different issue altogether.
although this whole age thing is rather silly, you have to admit...
--theorangesquid
"where are all the stupid people from, and how'd they get to be so dumb? bred on purple mountain range, feed amber waves of grain to lesser human beings" -nofx, 'the decline'
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I am sorry if I don't just to believe any personal account here on Slashdot. Seen to many silly claims here. Again I apologize. In some ways this whole situation just reaffirms my cynical view as you call it. Yahoo is the suppose to be the nice company that likes opensource (BSD), has been working toward IM standards etc, and here they are acting much like AOL/ICQ. I find it difficult but not impossible to believe that a company would have such a stupid policy! If you are under 18 you have to verify it with a credit card? I have heard of age verification the other way around. Oh well, as you said earlier it is too bad but I guess you should just tell your kids to lie about their age. I would rather have kids give out a bogus age than using a credit card #. Isn't it within the right of a user of a web site to protect personal info including age, especially someone under the age of 18? Doesn't disclosing age info put a child in greater danger? Just watch, pretty soon Yahoo will probably start requiring CC age verfication either way. Actually that would be more consistant and make more sense, but probably would upset many users especially if they required it every time a user want to change their personal info.
I'm incredibly curious about something. Having a credit card is proof of being 18 or older, but being 18 or older does not automatically result in getting a credit card. Moreover, many adults refuse to get credit cards, denouncing them as capitalistic tools designed to keep people in perpetual debt, nigh unto indentured servitude. Therefore, would requireing a credit card not count as discrimination? At that point, you're not keeping kids out, which is legal, you're keeping anybody who doesn't have a piece of plastic out, which seems to me to be an artifical exclusion, which, again, seems to me to be illegal. Comments?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I agree. Why the hell should international users of an international group (the internet community) have what they can do on it imposed by one country. It's time for an international body to govern the internet, not just America.
-- John Linford
ytalk, anyone? That's what I've always used when I wanted to chat with someone. Between the telephone, email, ytalk, irc and others, I've never really found a need for another communications program like ICQ. I dunno, I guess it feels unnecessary to have more communication devices than friends.
--
share and enjoy
Jabber is a great idea and I hope it becomes a success, but I think that a larger 'distributed' model is called for -- or will be, eventually. With the current model for 'distributed' networks, a reliable system probably is not wholly feasible, but there must be a way with some modifications to make such a system, altered from the current Gnutella-like service.
---
seumas.com
> address, etc) of anyone underage. All ICQ has to do to remove itself from any concern is take the age category out of
> their demographic marketing information gathering registration section. Suddenly, they'll no longer knowingly be
> tracking anything from a child under 13.
So all we have to do is bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobby enough scumb^H^H^H^H^Hrepresentatives to s/13/999/g in the law, and at least America will be rid of Doublefuck and the rest of their ilk for once and for all :-)
wouldnt 0 be more appropriate :-)
/*
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
If you could then everyone might claim they are under 13 in an attempt to protect their privacy.
i am 16 and i can damn well understand the consequences of my actions better then a lot of the adults i know...
Try to remember what you were like when you were fourteen years old. Since then, haven't you become much more intelligent and mature? Aren't there many things that you understand a lot better now that you're a few years older? There's so many things that the fourteen year-old you didn't know, so many things he was naive about.
When you're eighteen, you'll look back at your sixteen year-old self and think the same things. And when you're twenty, you'll look back on you at eighteen and wonder what the hell you were thinking. And so on, at least as far as you experience intellectual and emotional growth.
Someday, you'll wake up a middle-aged man, and you'll think that all teenagers are idiots who dress funny, and you'll think it's well and good that the voting age is eighteen years.
--
share and enjoy
Because 90% of the time, messages on ICQ are sent CTC.
--
bullshit
i am 16 and i can damn well understand the consequences of my actions better then a lot of the adults i know. I am complaining, because the gov't has no right to take away my rights without my say. i am knowledgable enough to decide for myself what is right and wrong.
if minors can be charged as adults in court after they committ crimes, then they should be considered adults all the time. you cant have it both ways.
i understand you'll have to take my word for it, but i cant believe they let some of the idiots (adults) in the USA (where I live) vote and I cant. Im sorry, but there is no reason for that.
You can vote even if you have no idea about what the voting process is or what it does or even who you are voting for, if you are over 18. I understand all those things, better then a lot of adults most probably, and I cant vote.
Someone please explain why.
I wish it were illegal, but it probably isn't. Have you tried to check into a hotel or, better yet, rent a car without a credit card?
As others have pointed out, also, having a credit card isn't proof of age.
To address a U.S. law aimed at protecting idiots' privacy, we cannot permit people with an IQ under 70 to use the internet. Your profile presently shows you are an idiot (Remember that post you made saying "Me Too"? What the hell were you thinking?). Therefore, we will close your account within 48 hours. If you are an idiot, you may open an account only after you stop being an idiot (i.e. never). We regret any inconvenience
That will take care of the entire AOL userbase.
Mmmm.. Donuts
The lessons we teach our youth...
Just lie. Then you can use it.
umm... this wasn't supposed to be 'troll-ish' this was supposed to be 'sarcastic' i mean, i guess my point is that ICQ banning 13 year olds is probably going to be a complete practice of futility.
/.'ers!"
but then again, maybe i am becoming a troll... i can just feel the transformation now...
(gargling sounds) "linux sux because microsoft rox pretty hard! well pour hot grits down my pants, i've got FIRST POST! hey taco, you're a DORK and so are the rest of you
Jesus! did i say that?
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
You're forgetting about the whole paragraphs of text in 36pt font.
first of all the thing you say about the UIN's are wrong. I got an UIN of 118xxx and i'm no developer at ICQ etc. And when thats said its a fake. The other day i recived a message from the same UIN which asked me to send them my password...comeon people think damnit..It's NOT against the law for a 13 year old to use ICQ.
then under what grounds are they going to kill your account?
They have no proof that you actually are under 13.
Also someone mentioned that by law children under 13 could not waive there privacy rights.
Is this national law?
Or is it international law?
ICQ has users in other countries and the age limits for such things vary from country to country.
Is ICQ going to boot users in other countries who are under 13 and can legally waive there privacy rights?
-----
If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
ICQ User #1 is in fact the admin of ICQ ... it's the user number that gives system messages
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Most of the chain letters are not sent out by people under tha age of 13, but by teenagers and middleaged people who dont know any better.
May the source be with you \0perator
I haven't been around from the very beginning, but the internet used to be a place where people could share ideas without worrying about age. Being 17 myself, I always say that I'm at least 21, not to throw off their user database stats, I don't care if they know how old I am, but beacuse it's very likely that I'll be under some restrictions if I do. My sister had to go though a whole bunch of parental permission forms when she opened a hotmail account. I know more about what I'm doing, softwarewise, than a lot of people, but technically, I can't install a lot of proprietary software, beacuse I'm not old enough to accept the license agreement (like that stops me, though). This decision isn't going to help anyone, all it's really going to do it throw off any database stats on the company's side, and cause a lot of annoyance on the user side. Anyway, it's more likely that I can determine more personal information from an e-mail address than an ICQ account. They aren't going to hurt anyone but themselves.
-The Tempest
Damn, I posted as plain text but it read BLINK as a tag. I meant to say....
You're forgetting about the whole paragraphs of text in 36pt BLINK font.
Quite some time ago, I went to set up a Yahoo ID for my dog. (Don't ask, but the DOG'S email was cluttering my inbox) Yahoo! was requiring a DOB. I happily entered 4/1997 and found that the ID I wanted has now been locked out. END OF STORY. (the ID is still locked out) I was sent to the Yahooligans! page and told something about having my parents confirm my ID with a credit card.
Needless to say that my dog has now comitted credit card fraud so she can give them her CC# and thereby activate her email account. What's next...will she have to send them a paw print? *sigh* "The light at the end of the tunnel is undoubtedly the headlamp of an oncoming train" - Mrs. Murphy
The extent of ICQ's marketing research part of the registration is basically just them asking your occupation and where you use ICQ (home/school/work/ec). ICQ lets you enter a user profile, which gets stored in a database on the server searchable by anyone. One of the fields is age, another is birthdate (older ICQ clients only had age; that field is kept for compatibility but is auto calculated from birthdate in newer clients) All fields in the profile are optional. The issue is if someone fills in their profile as being under 13, then the server will notice and complain.
for those interested, icq UIN #1 is the "System" account, i.e. the windows icq client treats messages from this UIN as special messages, coming not from an user but from the mirabilis team.
I will not buy this software, it is scratched
I am over the 13 year barrier placeed by ICQ, but have met individuals under that age range. They have all the good MP3s. And when napster started freaking out on the users who had metalica or Dr.Dre on their lists we would just trade thru. the ICQ messenger. Now that users under 13 are having problems they switch over to AIM which doesn't seem to be imposing these restrictions. Strange thou doesn't AOL own ICQ. It would appear that they are trying to phase out the company they bought and once again monoplize their product. If AOL has been enforcing this age limit on AIM I have seen no example of it.
*shrug* I submitted this story about two months ago when a friend of mine told me about getting this message, and that he was going to be kicked off ICQ. Incidentally, since, due to this kid's demeanor, I thought he was 17 (as I am), it surprised the hell out of me. :P
And yes, to fend off any questions, I -did- post it with a username... *shrug*
"Nothing sticks to Teflon! Except those damned rockets..."
Now I'll stop getting 10-13 year olds adding me to their contact list for no reason and then never messaging me.
Um...probably because I was still dazed from the concert the night before. Heh.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
COPPA basically says personal information can not be stored for children of 13 and under, right? So why couldn't ICQ write a program that scans through their database, and erases the personal information (name, address, etc.) of children of 13 or under? Doesn't seem too difficult to me.
Unfortunately, COPA makes complying with it extremely expensive, and the risk of a lawsuit is just too high. I run a small web site and have also been forced to post "please don't use this service if you're under 13" on certain places that collect personal information, such as discussion group forums which collect e-mail ID, etc. for verfication purposes.
This is a product of uneducated goverment officials putting in place laws that make no sense and/or piss off and annoy anyone under 21.
Kids aren't stupid. If big bad ICQ man says you can't do it cause you're 11 then they'll hit the back button and type in 18. I do it all the time as a 15 year old because (being a webmaster) many legal clauses require me to be 18 so they can sue me for using their counter or service (god only knows why)
What they don't know can't hurt them, or more importantly, me.
More kids get picked up by pedophiles not by stiffs that have data on 30 million users but by perverts who hang around in britney spears chatrooms claiming they are 13 year old boys who are just as enfatuated with pop icons as these stupid girls. So go ahead, pass these stupid laws, not only will kids lie on the forms but the COPPA acts won't save little jane or johnny from a pervert.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Why do you have to be above 13 to use ICQ? COPA was struck down, and even if that was the reason, what of children outside the US? They wouldn't have been influenced by COPA one bit...
Land of the free? Yeah, sure... I see more and more such discrimination and segregation going on over there, and it worries me that such trends might cross the Atlantic...
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
i am 16 and i can damn well understand the consequences of my actions better then a lot of the adults i know.
:)
This I do not doubt. But I am surprised to see that you write lowercase 'i' in place of uppercase 'I'. Surely you are mature enough now to be an 'I' rather than an 'i'? ('i' is for the 12-yr-olds who can't ICQ).
i understand you'll have to take my word for it, but i cant believe they let some of the idiots (adults) in the USA (where I live) vote and I cant....I understand all those things, better then a lot of adults most probably, and I cant vote.
Not all of us adults in the USA are idiots.
Did all these "idiots" become that way after they turned 18, you think? If not, then if we lowered the voting age to 16 (but why stop there--how about 12?) wouldn't we have even more idiots voting?
If you think the system is unfair now, think of how it was for those who were drafted in some of our earlier wars in the U.S. They were old enough to go off and die for their country, however they were too young (under age 21) to vote for those who put them in harm's way to begin with. At least you can cast your vote in a couple of years rather than five years down the road.
Many ideas for election-screening have been considered: Some have argued for civics examinations of voters to prove their worthiness. However, there seems to be no fair way of doing this that doesn't offend one group or another. Some have argued that one should pay money for the right to vote, the idea being that whoever pays for the right to vote will value it more. This has the side-affect, however, that it discriminates against those with limited means or those whose racial groups encounter higher poll-taxes. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" (the book, not the movie) had an interesting, if somewhat controversial, take--in order to vote one must first serve a tour of active duty in the military. A curious proposition indeed. The architects of the U.S. Constitution determined that just being a white, male, U.S. citizen was enough to qualify a voter. Again, this is an imperfect scheme since the percentage of women and minorities who are qualified to vote is significantly higher than that of qualified 16-yr olds. While the present system is not perfect, and it empowers some with the vote who undoubtedly do not have the best interests of the nation at heart, at least it has a modicum of fairness in its accessibility.
Incidentally, when you are too young to vote you can still participate in the political process by doing volunteer work for the candidates, parties, and referendums you believe in. In doing so you probably will have more than one vote's impact on the election outcome.
I have seen some cases where they abuse the term. Usually in stories about some boneheaded ISP getting rid of someone's account because they said something the ISP didn't like.
doesn't aol Own icq. I'm not surprised. They had to screw it up somehow.
Okay, so maybe it's the law, but it's a US law! How would a US law apply to a kid under 13 in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France and so on?
Another interesting thing: Because of this Children Online Privacy Protection Act I have already been forced to give my age and country of residence on various US-based sites and forums. What the hell of my own privacy???
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Instead of killing people's UINs, they should've just done the other half of the job for themselves too -- "Hi. We noticed that your age and/or birthday as stated in your profile indicates that you're under the age of 13. Since you agreed to our user policy when you signed up, you must be over the age of 13 and thus lying on your profile. Your age has been reset to 13, and the birthday adjusted accordingly. Please do not lie in your profile in the future."
// zyqqh
I really don't think ICQ is expecting to keep 13 yr olds off of their system -- however, what they've done will keep their hands clean. If someone raises hell, they can now point to the policy and say, ``hey, we said he/she couldn't use it.''
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
I think you are all wrong. I maybe be a little intoxicated but, I know for a fact that you can spoof from uin #1. go here and check it out. http://isoaq.da.ru ICQ would send you a system message not a personal message from uin #1. I think ICQ is just like napster. they'll delete your account if they find you, but are they really going to look?
I fully agree! are you guys at slashdot fucking idiots? are you going to start posting chain letters next? Research something before you fucking post it. Its posts like this that should be moderated at a 5, by people who are know about the subject. I bet the person who submitted this was under 13, you'd have to be to submit it, and you'd also have to be under 13 to actually post it!
Exactly; it isn't proof of age. Yet, places like Yahoo are trying to use it like it is. And checking into a hotel or renting a car is different; you're giving the card as a guarentee of payment should you wreck the merchandise, bugger off with it, etc etc. You WILL be charged. Yahoo is simply using it as a ticket to entry; they flat out state 'you require a credit card, but no money will be taken from it.' Let me restate: Unlike car rental, hotel, or even a Blockbusters, Yahoo is NOT using the credit card as a form of payment. They require NOT THAT YOU GIVE THEM MONEY, BUT THAT YOU HAVE A CREDIT CARD. If they attempt to take money from that card, that's fraud; they've stated that they require no payment. My wife is 20, but she has no credit cards; that means that in the eyes of Yahoo, she's not old enough to warrent an account. That's not right.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You're right. But I think alienating the 13-17 crowd would kill ICQ's bread and butter. Most of their users are high school kids, as far as I can tell... which makes me wonder about why I always get spammed with porn when I make the mistake of loading up that thing.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
What's wrong with this picture? > > All UIN's under 100000 are employees/developers > (and probably some friends) of mirabilis/AOL. > For end users, it starts at 100000 on up. > And then CyberOptic's reply: > > first of all the thing you say about the UIN's > are wrong. I got an UIN of 118xxx and i'm no > developer at ICQ etc. > Ummm... since 118xxx is > 100000, guess what? The original poster was exactly right-- normal accounts are above 100000. :P
The ICQ program is not a website. And the icq.com website itself doesn't require any personal information. I don't see how COPPA is any more related, then, than COPA.
COPPA states that a website may not KNOWINGLY require or track personal information (age, name, address, email address, etc) of anyone underage. All ICQ has to do to remove itself from any concern is take the age category out of their demographic marketing information gathering registration section. Suddenly, they'll no longer knowingly be tracking anything from a child under 13. To them, everyone will simply be a 'user' or a 'member'.
In fact, removal of an age section is the solution many sites and services have used. The only problem is that a lot of companies grasp onto their precious marketing-machine to gather data on every aspect of their users and they find it more valuable to track ages than to allow the younger set to enjoy the use of ICQ (and other services) too.
Also, if I recall, doesn't this only apply to commercial services? Does ICQ (since it provides a free service without advertisements) even fall under the commercial service regulation? I suppose it probably does... Still, this whole thing is rediculous.
---
seumas.com
Since I posted, they changed it to "privacy". The original category was "censorship".
Thanks Slashdot!
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
No, what I'm looking forward to is a fully distributed system of communication where every client is also a sort of server. De-centralize the control and operation of such a system and you also shrug off the responsibility and legal implications of it. How do you stop 60,000,000 freely distributed and connected clients?
There would also be less interest in such a sytem, for tracking personal data for demographic databases. I don't believe COPPA refers to any information provided where a person says "I am 12 years old and my email address is haxorboy@hotmail.com". It applies, if I read it correctly, to the collection of this information. Thus, on a distributed system, there would be no centralized databse with a collection of this information. If the user is connected to the network and has entered their age or email address or other information into their 'profile', that profile remains on their system and cannot be searched, archived or otherwised gathered and manipulated. Once they disconnect, all about them is removed from availability until they connect once again.
Maybe that's dumb. I dunno. It just seems like a better solution.
---
seumas.com
Well, it's a good thing this post didn't actually mention censorship anywhere, aside from michael's update which pointed out the distinction between the COPA and the COPPA.
Read before you react.
My dear fellow Americans, it is with a heavy heart that today I give you the following message. Over the past few years, the internet has proved to be a very dangerous place. Our children are constantly exposed to unwanted elements of socioty, commerical web sites have be taken over by computer hackers, not even your own goverment itself has been free from the evil the internet has brought upon the world
I belive it is imparative for the Welfare of the United States that the computers are no longer in service. Starting next week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been given permission to seize and destroy any/all computers found in the united states. Anyone found hoarding technology will be met with harsh punishment.
I thank you for your support in my signing of the National Computer Saftey Bill.
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
When I was 12 I didn't have much to do. I discovered something called a computer. I met all these cool people all over the world just like me that I could talk to. But guess what? I met this cool dude at my school who was the technology admin. He told me that it is a good idea not to give out my personal information over the (fledgling) internet.
And I haven't been molested by a pedophile yet
The point of this post is that there are many simpler and much less-repressive ways to protect our children.
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
So if you are under 13 then you can just lie or give no answer and be able to use the service. So what COPPA is doing is forcing 13 and unders to "mingle" with adults. So that 25 year old that you are flaming or flirting with might actually be a 12 year old child.
Now that could always have happend but now the child can not speak up and say "Hey, I'm only 12!" because they might be kicked off the service.
Also the "monsters" out there praying on children will be able to defend their actions because no children are allowed on ICQ!
So much for protecting children online. We want safe online locations for kids but the requirements are so expensive to implement that we are effectively taking the "playgrounds" away.
it's a good thing they did that, because we know that all 13 year olds are entirely too computer illiterate to lie about their age in an incredibly complex system such as ICQ.
Thank you, ICQ, for putting your foot down and saving america from itself.
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
Perhaps you should get a slashdot login. I'm sure they pay more attention to users who are willing to put a name to their story
How about something new AND interesting. It seems all I read is either incredibly old news, like this, or is incredibly uninteresting. I got that icq warning a long time ago, even though I am over 13 (I put 2 as my age. How dumb can they get?!). Anyways, the previous commentators are right. All it takes is a few clicks, and suddenly, you are 22 or 99 in my case. hehe. There is no impact on anyone here, so lets keep the news on interesting, life-affecting news. Like the stalling of the break-up of Microsoft. hehe. I can't get enough of the fact that Bill and the gang think they can hold on to their dear monopoly.
"As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the Internet" --Al Gore to Katie Couric 3/99
Unlikely. This guy just doesn't know how to spell. Foreign language speakers, on the other hand, make grammatical errors.
If you spoke aloud what this guy was trying to write, it would sound proper.
This is probably the really obvious thing to ask...but did anyone else receive this message? I wonder if it couldn't have been someone who compiled licq with --spoof-uin (or whatever the compile-time option is) and sent a message from UIN #1 that way. It sounds much like the usual "ICQ will delete so-and-so accounts if you don't forward this message" spam that goes around once in a while.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
If AOL hadn't bought ICQ, this would not be a problem. Mirabilis was based in Israel, and US law does not extend there.
This is just another problem with big companies buying everything out: it brings everything under the control of all those computer illiterate white-hairs sitting around in Washington.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Remember, this is not the same as the Core fiasco. Strictly speaking, anything like ICQ which provides not only communications and reveals things like IP addresses, can be construed as privacy invasion. Simply speaking, children under 13 cannot legally waive these rights. AOL is only covering itself from a lawsuit, in the case of a pedophile or someone else arranging a meeting. I don't think it's an afront on freedoms, but I'm over thirteen, so maybe I'm biased.
I would think AOL and ICQ would be covered by common carrier priveledge in the case of a lawsuit, but American's are so sue-happy that someone will end up suing them anyway.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
I had just installed mandrake 7.1 beta just after this message had been sent out. seems that the GnomeICU had set my date of birth to Jan. 1st, 1999. the next morning, I found that my UIN had been deleted. even numerous emails questioning what had happened went unanswered. The final result was that I lost my UIN, because the people at Mirabilis/AOL, in all their infinite wisdom, felt that I was an extremely intelligent 17-month-old baby boy.
I'm just the prodigal son, aren't I?
bleh.
I'm sorry but this is a hoax. There is no UIN #1, they start at like 1000 or 10000 or something. That message was sent by someone using a program like licq to spoof the source of the message. I've done things like this to friends, saying their accounts would be cancelled. If this were real it would be sent as a system message, not as a message from UIN #1, since then it wouldn't even get to everyone because someone people have ICQ set to block everyone not on their contact list. Once again, this is a hoax.
It may be stupid and unfair, but it isn't illegal. It would be illegal to discriminate against a protected class, such as by gender, race, religion etc. The applicable federal law can be found here.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You're not even 13 and you read /.!!! I wish I had been that smart at your age (I started at 17, and am presently 18)
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
This is Plain Old Text
This post and the one next to it have exactly the same body except for the text between the tags.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I have real trouble understanding legal language; my brain just isn't wired that way. So I'll ask you. Is economic status 'protected?' Yahoo isn't demanding payment; it's not a case of 'if you can't afford it, too bad, get a job.' It's almost the equivalent of Yahoo saying 'Show us 10 1000 dollar bills....ok, go on in. No no, keep your money; this is a free service.' If they wanted money, then yeah, they'd be fully within their rights to require a credit card; that's fine. But they don't want money; doesn't shouldn't that mean that they can't require proof of liquidity?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Now if we could only ban anyone under the age of 13 from using irc and making shitty webpages with way too many animated gifs and pastel colors we would be making progress. wOOt!
I got the same message about two months ago. I had set my info to 8 as a joke. I was _shocked_ to see this message I was checking the uin.. thinking shurely this was a hoax. It was from UIN zero... Ahh... I guess you can no longer set humorous info on icq... maybe I'll just set it to 85 now...
Thank goodness I live in a country that teaches its children from the time they are 13 that you have to lie to obtain basic human rights... like ICQ
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
I believe this is fully correct. We have no lives, us ICQ'ers and IRC'ers... Why even -bother- talking to us?
Go away with your women, life and everything! We prefer this!
Or else we just don't have anything to do.
By the way... is this a new?
"Those who don't know, talk. Those who don't talk, know." (Therefor, I never talk!)
From the Usage Notices
Children Under 13
The ICQ service, software, network, system, Web site, servers, various directories and listings,
various message and news boards, tools, information and databases, are NOT FOR USE BY CHILDREN UNDER 13 YEARS OF AGE. Please note that if it comes to ICQ's attention through reliable means that a registered user is a child under 13 years of age, ICQ will cancel that user's account.
So, yes, you can lie to them, and they don't have to care about it until they have good reason to beleive you to be under 13. Yes, this isn't very specific, but that's all the grounds they need. And if they kick you out for being under 13 when you're actually not, your civil liberties have not been violated. It's a service they're letting you use, and they always, regardless of age, have the right to kick you off.
Maybe somebody can explain to me how it is different to allow a child under 13 to use AOL but not allow them to use ICQ?
AOL owns ICQ... and apparantly they are doing this to protect themselves from possible lawsuits brought by parents... but can't any age use AOL (and thereby talk to people through instant messages and essentially have the functionality of ICQ) or is there some hidden restrictions there also?
Josh
Too bad, you should really contact your representatives and say in the next election.. oh wait, you are too young to vote.
Maybe you can tell them you will vote with your tax dollars.. oh wait, you don't pay taxes.
Maybe you can threaten to cancel service. That's it. And to make sure, you can call your credit card company and.. oh wait, you are too young to have a credit card.
Hmm.. put it up there with drinking, being drafted, getting married, driving and all of those other little things kids get bent about until they are old enough to do them legally and then it does'nt seem to matter that much.
Sorry, now that I read it, it sounds bad! What I meant was as an age thing.
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.
Something this and many other websites might wanna watch out for with regard to COPA... Section 231, subsection 6, paragraph A defines materials harmful to minors (under 17years of age) as materials that "... the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest..." now for the weak of vocabulary... so any image that the majority of people think is designed to appeal to a lustful interest would be a violation of COPA unless they required a age verification signature or a credit card number (although many banks issue visa check draft debit cards to people as young as 13)
I know many many websites and X11 hardware ads that violate this... Maybe COPA should be striken also...
Joseph Nicholas Yarbrough
-o Attorney at Heart o-
Stupid people do stupid things... Smart people outsmart each other... --System of a Down
Per their terms of service, Yahoo! doesn't allow users under 18 to post personal ads. However, a lot of the non-porn ads state that the woman's age is 18 in the header, and then the first sentence of the body is "hi im actually 16/f but they wouldn't let me put 16."
Unless they start doing age verification through more trusted sources (can you say privacy invasion?) on the Internet, nobody will know you're a minor.
For more information, click here.
That's right. I checked my age in the GnomeICU profile right after posting the story and it was correct! Does anybody know of a bug in GnomeICU that prevents it from uploading ages correctly?
This is ExTrans
This post and the one next to it have exactly the same body except for the text between the tags.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I realize that paying taxes is nowhere near as bad as going off to fight in a war; however, it's still a good reason to be able to vote.
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
COPA (which I understood had been repealed) only required that places which REQUIRE or SOLICIT personal data from children under the age of 13 acquire parental permission.
ICQ does not require this data. Thus, don't provide it and ICQ won't have any compelling reason to remove your account. This is not 'circumventing' anything by proving no (or fake) information, since it is never required to begin with.
Also, I have to wonder how this effects users outside of United States jurisdiction.
---
seumas.com
Aside from the occasional precocious 12 year old who learned BASIC (or whatever they teach kids nowadays) in his diapers -- I wasn't one of these -- most of the kids on the Internet today are, well, kids: annoying, obnoxious, random, and.. to be blunt.. dumb.
Correct me if I'm off, but: Aren't most script kiddies alleged to be 13-year-olds who can't type, and who use exploits to "prove" their environmental dominance, coerce the respect of their peers, and attempt to fit in with others?
How much better would IRC be today if it weren't for all the 12-year olds who operated fludnets?
Not to mention, how much better would your average search engine result be?
I think ICQ is onto something here, man.
Keith "when I was a kid, we didn't have the Internet, we had to dial into bulletin boards! And there was only room for one person at a time! And we had to dial into them at 1200 baud! Both ways!" Tyler
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Well, I agree that 36p BLINK sucks, but I don't think that bad taste is all age-related... I have seen many personal pages of middle aged ppl with the same 36p BLINK text and background colour that is as pink as salmon.
;)
Er... On the other hand I haven't seen any well designed pages made by a 13 year old...
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Why the "-a"???
Well, you see your own open ports, but what good is that in this case?
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
I wish Slashdot would have a different category for stories like this. Misusing the word censorship just dilutes the important meanings, such as government making certain political speech illegal.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Jabber is decentralized in the same sense that email is. Just as every ISP or organization runs its own email server, they can run their own Jabber server. However, your roster (the Jabber term for what That Other IM System calls a "Buddy List"(R)(C)(TM)) may contain users on any Jabber server; when one of the people on your roster sends you a message, or presence information, or whatever, their server contacts your server, which passes it on to you. It's not quite as decentralized as a Gnutella/Freenet setup, but it's a lot more convenient for the end user. And there's nothing stopping you from running a personal Jabber server on your own box (or your site's NAT box, or whatever); if you've got a DNS name pointing to that box, other Jabber users on other servers will still be able to add you to their rosters, and will get your messages and presence as they would anyone else's.
Jabber IDs are expressed as "user@server," just like email addresses; this would make it easy for an ISP to give its users Jabber IDs identical to their email addresses, and with the same passwords for authentication, if desired (assuming they set up authentication correctly). In fact, Jabber IDs may include a third element, the "resource" (making the Jabber ID format "user@server/resource"), allowing a user to log into Jabber multiple times, from different locations and/or different devices.
Since everything in Jabber is done through the server, clients can be very simple. Even so, they can support connectivity to other IM networks (such as ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, and IRC) via services known as "transports" that are run on the server side and translate between the Jabber protocol and "foreign" IM protocols. (Incidentally, if you use the IRC transport to access IRC from Jabber, the IP address the IRC people will see is the IP address of your Jabber server. This is both good and bad; good because they don't see your real IP and hence can't portscan you, bad because it makes it easier for server admins to block all Jabber users if they get honked off at us.) An administrator can install a transport, and the users of that server can begin using it immediately, without any changes required to client software.
Finally, in regard to the topic of this article: Jabber can collect personal information about its users, if (and only if) they choose to provide it. (It stores it on the server, and in the Jabber User Directory, in the proposed XML vCard format.) This information can (but need not) include birthdate and/or age. How this will balance with the requirements of COPPA is a subject that has been weighing on my mind for awhile now. My gut reaction is "we just write the server; it's up to whoever runs it to follow the policy," but in some senses, that's kind of a cop-out. Perhaps one of the things Jabber.com should work on is a system to catch all users who have entered birthdates that would make them less than 13 years old (i.e., before July 3, 1987, as of the day I'm writing this) and send them notices and/or automagically delete them. In essence, we would be enabling a Jabber server administrator to do exactly what ICQ is now doing. I know that some people might view this as caving in to The Man, but, as the saying goes, "Dura lex, sed lex." ("The law is hard, but it's the law.") I'm sure ICQ doesn't like the thought of having to take this kind of action any more than I do, but...
For more information about Jabber, visit one of our Web sites, the JabberCentral site, the open-source development site, or the company I work for.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the core Jabber.org developers, and an employee of Jabber.com, Inc., but I don't necessarily set policy or speak for either organization.
Eric J. Bowersox
Software Engineer, Jabber.com Inc. (subsidiary of Webb Interactive Services, Inc.), Denver, CO
Developer, Jabber Project (author, ICQ transport)
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Ok, just a notice to the Slashdot admins...If anyone takes away my account because im 7 1/2, someone is going to get their anus haX0red. SwiftBob :-:mp3.com/PhysicsOfASquall ::
-Swift
-Swift
I'm old enough to give the government a large chunk out of my paycheck, but I'm not old enough to vote.
Youths are protected under law more than adults are as well. E.g. contract law is different for minors than for adults. Similarly, the criminal justice system is different for minors than adults. The voting age has to be set somewhere, and 18 is as reasonable a place as any. I have been paying taxes since birth, however I think it would be folly to suggest that I was a qualified voter when I was, say, two years old. If we moved the voting age to 16, then what about bright 15-year-olds? If we move it to 15, what about those precocious 14-yr-olds?...
So apparently "no taxation without representation" no longer applies?
It never applied in the first place. While it served as a rallying cry during the early days of the U.S. revolution, it was never anything more than political rhetoric. O that my tax burden could be as light as it was during the days of the so-called "Intolerable Acts"....
As I mentioned before, if you genuinely want to influence public policy (rather than just complain about its unfairness) then you should become politically active. With almost complete certainty I can say that your one vote simply will not change the outcome in any political election you participate in for the rest of your life. However, if you work for a cause and can contribute to changing 100, 1000, 100,000 voters' minds on an issue, then your efforts will matter.
Political activism is not closed to minors.
Marketers are less likely to spam people they think are under the age of 13. No credit card and less interest in porn than adults. I'm glad /. doesn't ask age, adults signing up as children would throw off the demographics so much that you might get Twinkie Winkey as our moderator.
To quote the ICQ Terms Of Service: [bold added]
Please note that the ICQ service is not for use by children under 13 years of age. If it comes to ICQ's attention through reliable means that a registered user is a child under 13 years of age, ICQ will cancel that user's account.
Now if someone spams you on ICQ, or just generally pisses you off, whip up a genuine-sounding letter and fire it off to them...
Presto, your problem has been resolved.
Thank you for using ICQ, and have a nice day.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
--
Yes, but that works just as well with the IP hidden. You don't need to know it, just your copy of the client.
Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...
Think of all the old men impersonating 12-year-old girls that this is gonna screw up...
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
What kind of a check is that? Here in Europe everybody has debit cards. The only reason I got myself a credit card two years ago (at the age of 20) is to be able to buy stuff online. I often do online purchases for friends and family who don't have credit cards.
There may be a minimum age to having a credit card, just like there's a minimum age to having a driving licence (which varies from country to country, but that's another thing), but that doesn't by any means say that everybody above that age has one of those things. Here you can have a driving licence at 18, I got it at 19. I got a credit card at 20. My girlfriend is 30, and she has neither credit card nor driving licence.
I'm surprised they can get away with an "age check" like that...
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Survival of the fittest, if some stupid shithead goes out and flies across the country to meet a pedophile then they deserve to get rapped and killed.
I have been on BBS's since I was 9 years old and I have not had a single problem with perv's ped's or druggies, though I have seen (online) my far share of all.
Basicaly what the US goverment is slowly doing is attempting to bypass the laws of darwanism.
I of course have NEVER put my real age date or name in anything, as a result, would you believe it, I don't get contacts from anybody names PornoBob nor do I have to worry about some a-hole I offended online coming upto my door with a shotgun (and I have had more then one local BBS're threaten so much, heh:)
Common sense says: Don't give out your real age/name anyways.
Don't talk to anybody you don't know.
If you don't like whats on your computers moniter, TURN THE DAMN THING OFF.
Easy as pie. As I said, I have been doing it since I was 9, (and I tought myself how to setup my own modem too, pretty nice considering no manual, no help, and I had only seen a modem once before, heh:)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I just signed up for Yahoo mail and IM yesterday. The only things required were name and e-mail address and birthday. Anybody got a screenshot of this CC# verification? I'm sorry but most posters on Slashdot have very little credibility with me. Seems like many people around here are making up stories just to tear down a company they don't like. I am going to need more evidenc before I consider this more than just another Slashdot hoax/rumor.
-BUT-
Who has ever forced you to hang around lamers? A nice trick, Delete ICQ! This way, you don't have to recieve tons of crap from everyone.
In the other hand, we have the same problem with email and spam... theheh, actually you have the same problem as long as people can contact you, not only on the internet... In real life too!!
Therefor, I advice you to commit suicide. That way, you don't have to meat -any- lamers!
Conclution, live with it or not... Do whatever you like!
"Those who don't know, talk. Those who don't talk, know." (Therefor, I never talk!)
What we really need is OFIPA (Old Fogie Internet Protection Act). After all, who is it who actually to fall for stupid viruses like ILOVEYOU? Who asks the most questions to tech support? Worst of all, who actually believes AOL is the internet? Besides, how many of them would realize that all they neecd to do is change the birthday they listed? It wouldn't really protect them from the internet; it would protect the internet from them.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
COPA was struck down, COPPA was NOT. There is a distinct difference between these two Acts, and I haven't yet, in scanning the replies, seen someone make this distinction. I thought you guys were smarter than that ;)
COPA was to protect children from porn. It roughly stated that any site with offensive material was to collect a credit card number before allowing a user on. It was a re-do of the Online Indecency Act.
COPPA is the Privacy act. It states that sites can not collect ANY information from children without getting a parent's permission. Since this is a technological nightmare (because congress has no concept of what technology can and can't easily do), many sites have opted to simply shut their doors to youngsters, including many game sites such as WON.net and M$'s Zone. It has NOT been struck down, nor have I heard much about any attempts to do so. I think the ACLU is making some kind of febel attempt.
I usually hate the ACLU, but lately they seem to be the only ones with enough money to bring the voice of reason into the latest barrage of uneducated decisions being made by Congress.
The COPPA angers me. And yes, I am a mother. It is my right as a mother to decide what sites my child can register with. My boy is only 5, but I'm building him his own computer. As soon as he learns how to type, I wouldn't mind him having an ICQ account, and certainly he's going to be big into gaming. Now, unless he lies, he can't join any game nets, except for the select few that still allow signups with a phone call or fax from me. And do you think I have time or enough interest to start calling people?? NO! This is the Internet! And like hell if I'm going to give them my credit card number. (Yet, right now my child couldn't even legally sign up for Ascheron's Call!!)
This doesn't even cover the fact that the bill is irresponsible. From what I've read of it, if cute little 8 year old Kimberly Smith sends an email to IBM saying, "Hi. I'm Kim. My mommy's name is Pattie and my dad's is Frank and we live in Los Angeles. I'm doing a report for school about bit computer companies. Can you please send me some information?". This is more than enough information to now put IBM in tresspass of the law, even though the information was unsolicited. The same thing goes if a child fills out an online form, even if it's for a company that has nothing to do with children, and makes no requests for information from children.
Also one must consider the impact this is having on dot-com startups who have catered to children. I read one article about a teen chat and teen's problem help sites that, due to low funding, have had to close their doors to the 11-12 year olds they once allowed. They simply do not have enough money to put in place a program to get parental approval. The same has gone for smaller children's sites. DisneyBlast.com has come out of this scott free, since they have the money, and they were collection credit card numbers anyway!
Well I've said my peice. Don't think that just because COPA has gone down that the COPPA has not! We still need to be speaking out against this. It is the parents' responsibility to police their child's web usage! NOT the gonvernment's!
according the the godwin's law faq. Merely using it as an adjective doesn't count.
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