Finding Legacy ICQ/Prodigy IDs

October 1, 2006 3:14 PM

How do I find old postings of mine in Prodigy and my original ICQ number?

I'm big into archiving of my past. I have an opportunity to get a few email aliases from my old University pointed to me so I can recover the PW from my original ICQ acct. Of course, I don't know the number.....I figured ICQ still allowed using one's email address to discover a number and have the pw mailed to it.

But no luck - it doesn't even seem to allow you to search by email anymore.


Also, in the process of trying to find my ICQ number, I found my old Prodigy ID - WCDF99D. I'd love to figure out a way to recover all the Prodigy posts I've made in the mid-90s.

posted by bkdelong to computers & internet (12 comments total)

I think AOL may have purged the old ICQ numbers. I used to have a 6 digit one that I can't find via the site search at all (I remember both my alias and the email).
posted by sbutler at 3:56 PM on October 1, 2006

THAT would be a travesty.
posted by bkdelong at 4:11 PM on October 1, 2006

Well, my six-digit ICQ account still works. But then again I do still log into it (albeit once in a blue moon).
posted by ed\26h at 4:37 PM on October 1, 2006

They probably purged all the dead ones.
posted by bkdelong at 4:39 PM on October 1, 2006

I found my old ICQ number (and Compuserve user-number) in an ancient backup of my Palm Pilot address book data. Maybe you have something similar?
posted by bink at 4:44 PM on October 1, 2006

I have email archived back to 1994. Still searching for it.
posted by bkdelong at 4:50 PM on October 1, 2006

I'm guessing you don't have any of the old files backed up anywhere. If you do, all that stuff is stored in files named [yourusernumber].idx, .dat, and so on. There's even a password recovery util that I found a long time ago that would tell you your old pw, but I don't know it's still available.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 5:47 PM on October 1, 2006

Is it 14120156?
posted by Wet Spot at 6:38 PM on October 1, 2006

Ex-Prodigy employee here: wish I had better news, but you're probably out of luck on the old posts thing.

Prodigy never bothered convering the service to any remotely modern format -- they shut down the service you remember in late 1999 (claiming Y2K as the culprit). They decided it was easier to just be a basic ISP called Prodigy Internet, and start their communities over from scratch as web-based boards closed to the general web... they even pretended to be shocked when nobody used them and the service bombed. The refugees scattered to boards all over the web, many of them ended up as Delphi Forums.

Unless someone tossed them, complete archives of the Prodigy boards DO exist... but they're in some nameless vault somewhere on backup media in a markup language nobody knows anymore. They have no hope of ever seeing the light of day again for anything other than a court order, because they and whatever other Prodigy assets still exist have passed hands so many times that I couldn't even tell you for certain who has them (probably SBC/AT&T). It's actually pretty depressing that such a large piece of internet history is just GONE like that, but that's kinda a derail.

Your faint, but only hope are the board refugees. If you remember the board(s) and/or club(s) you posted on, then maybe you can track someone down who saved something. I'm willing to help if I can.
posted by Pufferish at 8:59 AM on October 2, 2006 [1 favorite]

Alas, Wet Spot, no..... it was 6 digit number.
posted by bkdelong at 5:21 PM on October 4, 2006

Pufferfish - any ideas where board refugees may reside? I can't remember any of the board names. But that might be a good thing to galvinize the Internet Historians with. Do you mind if I pass your note around?
posted by bkdelong at 5:22 PM on October 4, 2006

Not much chance you'll see it now, I thought the thread was dead... but yeah, I do know where some folks ended up ultimately -- though mostly Sci-Fi, Fantasy, RPG folks since those were the boards and areas I ran. I'm always willing to help any of the old board folks, so feel free to let anyone know how to reach me (e-mail's in my profile).
posted by Pufferish at 3:08 PM on January 19, 2007