ICQ Starts Blocking Alternative Clients

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."

IC what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news... people still use ICQ?

Re:IC what?

[residieu]

I still have my client connect to my ICQ account out of habit. I miss the good old days of ICQ when you could leave the "talk to a random person" feature on.

Less people can access ICQ...

[Joe the Lesser]

And nothing of value was lost

Re:AOL

[gehrehmee]

Didn't we just a few months back hear about AOL Adopting Jabber (XMPP)? [slashdot.org] If AOL is seriously looking towards joining the non-legacy IM network, maybe this is just the latest in a long line of effort to de-emphasize and eventually scuttle ICQ in favor of something a little more modern. Or maybe not. One can dream though.

You != Everyone

[Midnight Thunder]

I thought ICQ died years ago. Apart from MSN, which I use very rarely, what other IM clients are in common use?

Depending your geography and demographics, then you will find the popular IM network is not the same. For example ICQ still has a certain popularity in Eastern Europe, QQ in China and South Africa. Avoid basing global statistics on your own usage habits.

Re:Miranda still working.

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is wrong. They don't block alternative clients but an old version of the protocol. Alternative clients that emulate the current version are fine.

Maybe they could just "un-retard" it

[Moraelin]

Well, on the topic of forcing people to upgrade... maybe if the newer software wasn't so retarded, more people would upgrade. Just a thought.

Admittedly my anecdote isn't comprehensive marketing data and isn't that new either, but just to illustrate a point. So at one point I wanted to communicate with someone who supposedly had only ICQ.

The last version I had used before was, IIRC, 2002a. Or something. At any rate, it was a relatively clean interface, with just the two text-fields needed, and the minimum of buttons that one might need. All in the Windows configured colours, and with sensible icons that are there, but don't scream for attention and don't look like someone flew an airplane into a clown makeup factory. I'm not necessarily a fan of ICQ or AOL, but I could respect that interface.

Well, I figured, wth, let's get the newest version. You know, what with potential security holes and whatnot in older versions. I think the version at the moment was ICQ 4. "With Xtraz!" The l33t (ok, SMS-speak) spelling in a product name should have been warning enough. It was everything that the old version wasn't: retarded and annoying and looking like a desperate scream for attention. IIRC with an ad banner thrown in for good measure too.

I actually went "oh, fuck the security holes, that's why I have an anti-virus and data execution check turned on." I actually uninstalled it and dug through old backup CD-R's to find my trusted old version.

Well, I uninstalled it completely after a few days and never looked back. So I wouldn't know if the even newer versions fixed that or continued down that slope towards software-Alzheimer's.

But just saying... if you find that you have to _force_ people to give up their old versions and use the newer one, even when it's for free (as in beer;)... there may be some subtle hint in there.

And yeah, I know there are other programs one can use instead of the official client. They're just kinda irrelevant for the point I was trying to make, which is about AOL making the users of its official client upgrade.

Re:IC what?

[AceofSpades19]

5 digits starting with a zero

ICQ, the socially conscious IM

[HalAtWork]

ICQ, the one IM app that doesn't send you a message every time someone hits enter, it promotes that they should finish their idea first before clicking the Send button, so the recipient doesn't have to read the same line over and over because they keep seeing blinking or hearing "message received" noises. The only blinking you see with this program is a tiny icon in the system tray instead of multiple taskbar panes blinking in a very distracting un-synchronized way.

Yes, you can configure your clients differently, but I'm talking about the default behavior. And even if you are courteous enough to not set it to send your message every time you press enter, your friends won't, and you'll still be getting one-liners that could have waited until they were finished typing their whole idea.

ICQ is not dead and use a patched ICQ client

[cycler]

I don't believe what I'm reading....

Slashdot people prefer MSN? Albeit with a alternate client??

Anyways, I've been using ICQ for several years and so does my friends. (The older ones anyways)

I use ICQ Pro 2003b client with patch to remove the ads.

Works great.

Had to upgrade to 2003 from 2000 (I think) when ICQ shut out older clients.

And yes, I probably should use Miranda or something. But still in ICQ network.

ICQ is for the Elder Geek
MSN is for young wannabees :) /C

(Anyone knows how to get the smiley on a single line and the slashC on 2 lines below?)

One more proof...

[Jesus_666]

...of how incredibly fast the anti-DRM hackers are. They defeated this devious increment-a-value-by-one scheme within hours!

Re:IC what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How old is your Pidgin?
Pidgin 2.4.2 got kicked off with message, suggested upgrade to 2.4.3 (only available from source build for now).