My ICQ Recovery Story (Score 1)

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.

I still have my old 16xxxxx number and mine was actually hijacked by some Russians because I hadn't updated my email on ICQ for nearly a decade and mail.com (and all associated URLs) apparently released a bunch of old email addresses and these Russians made a game of it and registered all the mail.com addresses they could with former account names and were able to retrieve passwords of older ICQ accounts like mine.

Anyway, I googled my ICQ number and found it posted on a Russian forum where someone said they had captured my number. I was able to retrieve THEIR ICQ info from their profile on the forum, including an address and a work phone number. I made a note of everything and had my Russian friend roughly translate the posts for me to confirm my suspicions. It was basically a giant game with a list of numbers that all had mail.com addresses and a competition to see who could acquire the most accounts with the lowest numbers. A quick look on eBay saw some of these lower digit numbers being sold. ICQ showed zero interest when I sent them all of the information I'd found out and I never even got a reply back from mail.com when I told them their accounts were being exploited. Nobody cared, not too surprisingly.

A couple of months later, I saw my account online one night and confronted the hijacker, who denied any knowledge of my account existing before he got it. He couldn't deny it for long because I noticed him changing my information as we talked and called him on it. I bugged the hell out of the guy, insulting him and saying he wasn't much of a big man if he had to steal an ICQ account from a girl. He finally gave me back my account and changed my password to "Nice(myname)" so I could access it again.

ICQ was indeed no help and mail.com were even less of a help in the matter. I had to take it all into my own hands and hey... I still have the account. First thing I did before I changed the password was to change my default email address, lest the hijacker get the brand new password.

My lesson learned: always keep your email info up-to-date, especially if it's free crapmail.