ICQ Botherers

February 11, 2006 11:04 AM

Having lain dormant for years, my old (seven digit!) ICQ account has, this weekend, suddenly become a magnet for random botherers. How do I make them go away?

They're nothing malicious, just a student in Bulgaria, a girl in Hong Kong, someone from Belarus, all just wanting to chat about nothing. I'm a friendly guy, but the frequency with which I'm being approached is beginning to irritate me. I've tried blocking them, without any effect at all. I've gone to mirabilis.com and icq.com, and removed all my details from the 'Unified Message Centre', but still they come.

I'm using Adium X on a Mac. The installer for the Mac version of ICQ simply fails to run the installer.

My next step is to fiddle around on a PC version of ICQ, to find some privacy option there. Any help?

posted by armoured-ant to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I've never used Adium, but according to their documentation "you can not manage block list settings such as 'Allow only users on my contact list' from within Adium...'". So, I imagine you'll have to do it from within ICQ itself, sorry.

Or, even simpler, if you're not actually using ICQ, you could just disable that account in Adium, right?
posted by Hildago at 11:27 AM on February 11, 2006

IIRC, you can change account settings (like "allow only users from my contact list") by logging in to the ICQ web site.
posted by winston at 11:29 AM on February 11, 2006

I had this problem a while ago and would have to say that the two posts before me are right. ICQ has more server-side wizardry than other clients due to the stored messages, even if it is running on the same protocol as AIM now.

On a tangent, seven digit ICQ accounts are considered old? I wonder when I got my six digit one... (begins with a one, even)...
posted by mikeh at 2:16 PM on February 11, 2006

For what it's worth, it's not just you; mine and nyxie's mostly-dormant seven-digit ICQ have been getting tons of unsolicited conversations from what seem to all be Russian and Israeli teens. I don't get it either.

gaim has a "Allow only users on my buddy list" privacy option for ICQ, but I don't know if it's server-side (set it, and then go back to your usual client) or client-side (gaim just doesn't show you the messages you don't like).

mikeh: I believe ICQ inflated their account number vs. number of users subscribed, and I'm pretty sure the first accounts in late 1996 had five numbers. They hit seven digits by mid-1997, I think.
posted by mendel at 4:38 PM on February 11, 2006

ICQ started out at 100,000 with bulk release number assignments. It used to be possible to probe account numbers and see if they were valid. I spent a few hours doing this ~97 and found out that the Israeli developers were ~1000. There were a few accounts around some number in the 10 K (70K I think) for some reason and then consistant numbers started at 100K.
posted by rudyfink at 5:37 PM on February 11, 2006

I have a 200K account since, if the previous comment is correct, 1996 and have hardly used it the last five or so years. But I've been using a IM aggregator (not Trillian, something else) and of all the major IM services, it's from ICQ that get the spam.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:29 AM on February 12, 2006

I've got a seven-digit ICQ account (8070503) and never get any messages, logged in thru Trillian. I don't mind random chatters at all, even to excess ;-D
posted by vanoakenfold at 6:53 AM on February 12, 2006