Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ICQ Starts Blocking Alternative Clients

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-that's-not-how-friends-play-nice dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It appears that since yesterday ICQ has blocked access to the ICQ network to alternative clients. Users of QIP, Adium, and other clients are getting a 'The client version you are using is too old. Please upgrade'. No comment yet from ICQ or AOL."

14 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. ICQ is still around? Wow by multipartmixed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That said, the forum thread is interesting. Looks like the ICQ admins are censoring posts.

    --

    Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
    1. Re:ICQ is still around? Wow by Ilgaz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Once upon a time ICQ was de-facto standard in Turkey. You know what they did? (AOL shareholders, listen)
      They banned the TURKISH CABLE IP BLOCK, the _country_ from reaching their servers. They actually banned Cable ISP monopoly but it was like banning all active, high profile users.
      People looked to alternatives, tried proxies (yes,pathetic but needed) and they stared at something which is already installed to their system. Windows (MSN) Messenger. The outcome will amaze you. Microsoft execs are at absolute shock because Turkish MSN _active_ users exceeds 25 million. That is 1/4 of country using a single service.
      Hope the idiots banning a country because of couple lamers read this message. Yes, MSN has 25 million users... Thanks to you!

    2. Re:ICQ is still around? Wow by Artuir · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Look, despite what nutjobs want to think about how corporations are out to get them and all of that crap, there likely was a reason that particular ISP was banned. Last I checked ICQ was not making much money from their service. On the other side of the same coin, because they do not have unlimited funds (like Microsoft), perhaps a lot of spam or hack attempts were coming from that ISP in particular. I'm sure they've banned quite a few other countries' ISPs if that's the case. Maybe the ISP didn't do anything to stem the tide of the crap their users were putting out? If that were the case.. shit, I'd ban them too. Especially if I really had to manage my resources extremely carefully to keep service operating as normal for everyone else.

      Seriously, you guys need to get out of this retarded "omg they're out to get us" mindset. There's reasons shit happens and I seriously doubt it's some kind of "oh we don't care, here have a ban" thing.

  2. ICQ = EVIL ? by Roskolnikov · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What I like is if you go to the tech forum on ICQ referred to in initial post you'll see that most if not all workarounds have been edited out by ICQ....nice.

    --
    Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
  3. AOL Censorship by Braedley · · Score: 2, Interesting
    It seems that AOL is censoring the names of alternative IM clients in the linked forum. Everywhere that Miranda or Pidgin should appear, there's ... instead. Ironically, iChat and Jabber are not censored (yes, I know that Jabber doesn't connect to ICQ).

    Well at least I know why I wasn't connecting to ICQ earlier.

  4. Re:Who still use ICQ? by JDAustin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I stopped using ICQ earlier this year when my low-seven digit account number was hijacked. ICQ provides ZERO methods of getting hijacked accounts back.

  5. Kinda sad by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll miss ICQ when they shut it down. I haven't gotten a real message from it in years (I think - I don't really pay attention to which service in Kopete I'm getting messages from), but I can't bring myself to stop connecting.

    I have a very low 7-digit ID from right after it came out. It was pretty cool to be able to randomly chat with friends without having to log into an IRC channel and wait for them to remember to come online. One time I even bought a girl a computer for Valentine's Day just so I could talk to her while I was at my ISP tech support job; we ended up getting married.

    ICQ sucks and it's spammy and doesn't do anything cool, but there's a lot of nostalgia in that crusty old system. I'll be sad the day when my login stops working for the last time.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    1. Re:Kinda sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Not to burst your bubble, but IDs for the general public started at 100,000. Numbers below that were reserved, so if somebody had one of those, they were either a Mirabilis employee or had connections. It was out a year or so before it made it to 7 digits.

    2. Re:Kinda sad by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      We'd been dating for a couple of months by then. I think I just got lucky though, and I doubt more women would like hardware than jewelry.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  6. Re:IC what? by jcr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ICQ is irrelevant. It will be absorbed.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  7. Russia too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    QQ dominates the IM market in China.

    In Russia too. Here, there is no "IM", there is ICQ. I will send you that via ICQ, do you have his ICQ, you were not on ICQ so I thought you were out of office, etc etc etc. And this is very sad.

  8. Re:IC what? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    > by requiring "friends" to be added before messaging.

    That functionality was in ICQ since the very first version.
    It's simple to kow your character by your choice of messenger-client:
    - ICQ: Pro, uses IM since the very beginning. Most likely uses a multi-protocol client, because not all of his friends are pros, Likes the ICQ network because he's used to have everything and configure everything.
    - AIM: Too stupid for a real messenger. Does think there's no use for a history or offline-messages becase he never could use them. Allows a maximum of three words per message.
    - MSN: Lazy default user. Uses IE and whatever came with his computer. Has yet to send a message without at least one of his thousand animated smilies in it.
    - IRC: Geek who thinks messengers are just bad IRC clones and IRC is already perfect. Lost his best friend because he sent him a html-mail wich even contained an image. This was too much for him.
    - Y!M: Huh? What? Yahoo has a messenger? Okay, I only know one girl there, so I can't tell...
    - Jabber / Google Talk: Either someone between the geeky IRC-user and the pro-ICQ-user who upgraded to newer and freer (is that a word?) technologies, or a Mac-user who happens to design websites for a living.
    Okay, and there are users who choose their client/network by peer pressure.

    Go on! Prove me wrong! (Meaning that more than 25% of the users don't fit my statements. One singe example proves nothing. ;)

    P.S.: If you now want to scream that I have a bias, read up some stuff about physics, human sensors and the brain, and then realize that your "non-biased-information" just happens to match your own bias. ;)

    P.P.S.: I use Miranda under Wine, connected to IRC, ICQ, Jabber, AIM and MSN... Go figure...

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  9. Re:IC what? by trickonion · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ....
    email...?

    --
    I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
  10. [Flashing Yellow Notecard] by ClosedEyesSeeing · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Uh-oh! ... memories...