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Thousands of ICQ Numbers Deleted
BondGamer writes "Many ICQ users woke up and found their ICQ numbers were no longer working. There is a topic on the ICQ support with more than 1,500 replies. There are pages upon pages of other topics asking what happened. As of yet, there has been no official response from AOL about what has happened."
DMCA takedown notices because they were found in the decimal representation of some movies?
You don't have to bother with registration or obnoxious UI. And if you use a fairly unique nickname, you can still keep in touch with friends.
Their ICQ accounts have not been baleeted, they've simply been reassigned to a new number.
If they can guess the number within 96 hours they can keep their account. Everything is the same eccept the number. A minor problem is that it does not update your friends' ICQ numbers if they're in the same lottery.
I don't see the problem.
Probably a server drive crash, and this is where we discover AOL have been reliably backing up their ICQ server to /dev/null all these years.
(and it seems mine is gone too, but I haven't used it in 4 years.)
-- Soruk
People still use ICQ? I wonder if it's really seeing any significant numbers of new users, or if it's just the old people sticking around.
I am not an ICQ number !! I am a human being !!
But call me, #6 !!!
Who is #2 ??? Eric Cartman ?!
Official response? Expect something along the lines of "We are trying to determine if we do indeed host this 'ICQ' service and who would be in charge, but chances are, we either fired them or that quit years ago."
Sounds like they let a sql n00b into the production database...
"Jimmy, could you get me a report for user #12345678?"
"Sure boss, I'll use my awesome SQL skillz"
clacketty clack... osql.exe... clacketty clack clack
select * from IcqUsers
wait wait wait
"Hmmm, that user is very far down the list. I'll get rid of these earlier records so that record will show up faster."
clacketty clack... delete from IcqUsers where UserID
wait wait wait
"JIMMY WTF ARE YOU DOING???? CANCEL THAT QUERY NOW. YOU'RE RUNNING IT AGAINST THE PRODUCTION DB"
"Yessirsirright now sir!!!!!!!!!"
and you can complete the story.
ICQ was my first instant messaging client, modern clients owe a lot in terms of features to Mirabilis' innovations. Buddy pounces, file sharing, ability to send messages to people while they were signed off. It also had a generally fun feel to it's gui and sound design. I'm still peeved that it was also my introduction to account theft, somebody with a Czech email address is happily the new owner of my six digit number.
Haven't logged on in some time. Wonder if we're both still there...
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Negative modding be damned, I have to get this out of my system.
"In Soviet Russia, ICQ number deletes YOU!!!"
delete from Users where clue = 0;
thousands of people screaming in total darkness, but alas they could not be heard; HAL-9000 deleted their account to let them in...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I remember trying ICQ a long long time ago before yahoo! and msn messenger became popular. I hated the thing. I don't know what language it was written in but it was pathetically slow and bloated. I recall sticking with IRC until yahoo! and msn came up with better written clients.
Is this just a publicity stunt to remind people that ICQ still exists? :)
:)
Bad publicity is still publicity.
I have both a six digit and seven digit ICQ number that I've had since the early days of ICQ and I had no issues logging in this evening, after not having logged in for at least a year.
it would be nice of my low icq number came back one day, iirc is was back in 1996 on a windows nt 3.51 box, then people started getting hacked, so by 1997 i wasn't using it, i used irc instead, then in 2006, i decided to try it again using linux, and i find that i can not logon anymore, so i try it in the mirables official client and find i can't logon anymore. i have lost my original email account finally in 2007 (spam ridden after 10 years of web presence, so i finally deleted it.) what's in a number? why should i care? because i did have some friends (contacts) that i made way back, and they are now lost forever.
All AOL seem to do is screw-up again and again these days. They must like bad publicity.
I was under the impression that AOL has been trying to kill ICQ for years now. How are these people so (un)blissfully unaware of the situation?
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
My sister was learning to use regexps and she must've done a typo...
I didn't use or even installed ICQ for at least 5 years :)
but wanted to check if my really old account with a nice 7 digit account number was still active.
Used: http://go.icq.com/ (no installation needed) to check.. and it is still working, guess i got lucky.
Now for another 5 years of not using it (but of course wanting to keep it
WE HATE YOU!
Just a friendly reminder
They're probably just yet another victim in the FUD spread by AACS, and is now trying to clean up their act with all their numbers in use. ;-)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
*uh-oh* :-P
My 7 digit uin it's still active, I remember it like my phone number. Ahh those were the days. I left icq after all my contacts went to yahoo or msn.
My guesses:
1.- Someone broke in and messed up the db
2.- A random clean up?
3.- Publicity? (As stated in comments above)
4.- Server failure
Well, I always just enter my ICQ number into Gaim, together with my MSN address, and it all just works (still does). All my old friends on the list are in it by their ICQ. I had no idea AOL owned it, though...
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Almost everyone complaining has a 6 digit or shorter account number. They just f*cked their million oldest, most faithful users.
Thankfully, my number is 7 digits.
I guess someone at AOL must've read a certain article about computers needing to forget...
It appears to just be a bug, and your numbers are safe. Backup, remove, reinstall as described here: http://boards.icq.com/boards/view_messages.php?tid =4555&topic_id=2216365.
YMMV
....Government deletes You and your ICQ numbers!!
Eclipse PDE and Me
23192319 disconnected by peer
23192319 gets a worm in his ear
23192319, disconnected for a year!
23192319, there's no such thing as luck in hell.
-Celine
Not possible. AOL have been haemorrhaging customers for years, which has limited their advertising revenue somewhat. No company wants to lose customers, even of free services, because it makes their portfolio look good if they want to sell.
This is more likely just a screw up.
No network problems.
If something goes wrong, we'll let you know here.
Hmm, looks like this is definatelly a case of the stupids.
Maybe they only used 32bit integers for the ICQ numbers, hit 4,294,967,295 and rolled back to 0.
Oddly enough it was working perfectly until I went to create an account. BTW, my name is ";Drop Table;"
First post = troll. Cleverly worded post designed to enrage others = flamebait.
I've got a number in the 105xxx range for the right bidder, if you don't mind fielding the occasional obscure question about an IRC client. ;)
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
My account is still working, I didn't know there were 6 and 7 didgit numbers. I have an ancient 8 digit UIN from like '96 or '97, 2526xxxx. old skool icq was way ahead of its time, though i now only have one friend who still uses it as well. I still log on it frequently as it is set up on my Miranda client.
In an ideal world, this would teach people something about the disadvantages of relying on a centralized server controlled by a corporation over which you have no influence for your communication-infrastructure.
Msn, and Aim have similar problems.Meanwhile, Jabber is the way of the future. Open protocol. Multiple interoperable implementations. Gateways to these "legacy"-protocols anyway, so you can still talk to your icq/msn-using friends. Multiple simultaneous logins. Server-side storage of buddy-lists (so log on from a different location/new computer and everything is there)
Oh, and for added bonus, jabber-ids on the format of email-adresses are a lot easier to remember than ICQ-uins.
I that was the the last version I tried that didn't have too much eye candy, ads, flashes etc :)
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
For many, many years they were content to just keep the dead accounts out there, I suppose to show investment bankers how much theorhetical money they could make...and if this was part of that process, maybe it's good.
:)
Or someone missed the syntax of an SQL statment, and the server room's on FIRE.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Fix here
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us
I felt a great disturbance in the Net...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
Do or do not, there is no try.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
i got a 6 digits and it works
and my friend got a 5 digits number. oh yea baby. can we date now?
I tried his ICQ number this morning 666 and it's gone. The bothers me as we really had a good deal in play. He was going to make me Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It was all most done. Blair announced his resignation and I was to step in as planned. He even had a way figured out to get around the fact that I am a US Citizen and everything. Seeing how the US was already taken.....
I wonder if I can sue them for interference with a contract?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
ICQ is still pretty big and afaict it runs on the same servers as AIM which is also rather big. I rather doubt they will even notice /.
/. the only sites that tend get /.ed are those that come into the following categories
for all the jokes on
1: those with big downloads
2: those on home connections
3: those with dynamic content that doesn't have caching mechanisms in place to deal with lots of hits on the same page.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
This is NOT new! My number got f*cked back in December of last year:
http://www.sugapablo.net/story.php?id=478
Sugapablo
... in the Interweb. It's as if a 1000 skript kiddies cried out and where silenced.
There are currently 72 pages of posts to that complaint thread. I don't feel like wading through it all to find out if anyone has answered anyone. Can anyone summarize?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
1) AOL CDs, if angled correctly, can be used to reflect sunlight so as to allow communication via Morse Code over short distances (provided you get sunlight in your basement). Longer transmission paths can be achieved by bouncing the light signal off strategically mounted intermediate CDs.
2) Banging two AOL CDs together will effect a similar system using sound over shorter distances (eg: 'Mom, is lunch ready yet?')
3) Laying down a trail of two parallel lines of AOL CDs and linking them together tightly with paperclips so that the metallic reflective surfaces are electrically joined will create a circuit pathway allowing differentially-driven signalling (dig out those RS422 transceivers guys).
4) Write your message on a spare AOL CD using permanent marker and mail the CD to your recipient (slow, but will improve profitability of your local postal service).
5) AOL CD = FrisbeeNet?
AT&ROFLMAO
A couple years back, about once a month several hundred (if not thousand) accounts would have their password changed to something random and make it impossible for users to log in. This happened for several months in a row. I knew probably a dozen people affected by it. Since AIM is a free service and most AIM users weren't AOL customers (at least in the sense that they weren't PAYING MONEY to AOL), AOL didn't do anything about it. At first I thought it was Pidgin (GAIM at that time) related, but that turned out not to be the case.
Perhaps ICQ users are simply more vocal about it... but this isn't a new problem.
sig.
I hardly ever turn icq on any longer on account of the Russian/Czech/Ukranian spam. Very annoying and last time I turned it on some damn spammer who kept on spamming on me 'added me' - annoyed I checked and yep, my preferences were to not allow anyone to add me but for some reason spambot boy was able to. I don't even know what the purpose of doing that is but I definitely don't like it and don't turn the icq on for just that reason.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Obviously they didn't forward that message that all their friends sent them, so their accounts got flagged as inactive and deleted.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pag econtent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pressetext. de%2Fpte.mc%3Fpte%3D070511018
I HATE AOL. I HATE AOL. I HATE AOL. Its the worst company on the planet
You can't buy publicity like that.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Did they not read the e-mail that was sent round last week saying that ICQ was running out of numbers and that some would be re-allocated unless they proved they were active users by sending the e-mail on to all their ICQ using friends?
Too late to complain now, you should have read the e-mail and sent it on like me. It's not hard, sheesh.
I wish to remain anomalous
I had a 6 digit ICQ number starting with "333".... and it's lost. I took pride in looking at that as my 'nerd' badge of honor since I was on the ICQ train so long before others.
Needless to say, I haven't used ICQ in a long time since then, and I won't be using it any time again.
Fuck AOL.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I've asked them several times to delete my number intentionally, as I've not used it in years, yet they say that it's not possible. Now they go ahead and lose hundreds of numbers unintentionally?
Damn! Does that thing store the contact lists server-side yet? I remember the first time I used AIM (or MSN) and the server automagically kept my contact list.
I've got a 6 digit ICQ number that sits around in Trillian with exactly one contact on it who also has an AIM account as well. What is funny is that while we both use Trillian, sometimes the AIM link will drop yet his ICQ will stay online.
mine works, so i could care less.. until it doesn't work, then I still won't care because it's been years since i talked to anyone on it
Now all we need is a decent client.
You mean, a bloated ad-ridden flashy clunky pile of junk that forces constant upgrades down your throat?
No thanks. I'd rather stick with Miranda/Sim which both support jabber as well.
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
sorry. my fault
From the article:
However, it can now is not this this problem almost one hour exists and it no one of the support necessary holds here something User again to stations with it we also only once can have calmed.
Well said, man. Well said!
Comment of the year
I had my account deleted years ago, when I jokingly put "1" as my age in the profile, apparently they will get rid of your account if you put anything less than 13 in there.
My 6 digit UIN is still working this morning. I use it every day.
Uh-Oh! Now I know why it always made that noise when a new message came in. ICQ can see the future!
-Xoltri
If the grammar of the posters on the ICQ message board is any indication I'd say that their ICQ accounts were deleted because AOL was ashamed to have such illiterate messages on its network...
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
It would be cool if the English language had colorized syntax highlighting.
I hadn't in a few months so I checked it...
And all of my friends still don't remember me! hah
7 digit # still going strong@!
cause thats how the world works now
I got booted off aim on 2 screen names that night, and the passwords had been changed. I had to do a password reset on aim.com dunno if that was related..
So they really do leave the west behind? That knocks me out.
Better luck in the future.
In a way, they already have. AIM and ICQ run on the same protocol now, and users with relatively recent clients can talk to users of the other service that also have new enough clients.
End of Line.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Trillian FTW. :)