
ICQ New - LemonHotdog
https://icq.com/desktop/
======
bcx
This post made me wonder what happened to ICQ.

"(2010) AOL has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies (DST), Russia's largest
Internet company, for US$187.5 million. DST's offer was apparently more
attractive than those of Russia's ProfMedia and China's Tencent. ICQ,
originally released in 1996 and bought by AOL in 1998 for US$407 million, was
one of the world's first major instant messaging systems. Although largely
forgotten in English-speaking countries, it remains widely popular in Central
Europe, Russia, and Israel. Moscow News has additional coverage of the deal."

([https://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/01/1516234/russian-
com...](https://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/01/1516234/russian-company-buys-
icq))

~~~
DangerousPie
Note: "remains widely popular" was already arguable when that story was
written in 2010 and is definitely not true in 2020.

~~~
dvirsky
At least in Israel no one was using it after ~2005 or so.

------
kalia35
"ICQ New does not encrypt your communications. In addition, your
communications may be routed through different countries - that is the nature
of the Internet. ICQ New cannot accept any responsibility for any unauthorized
access or loss of Data."

LOL

~~~
rkagerer
This is such a real shame. I miss ICQ; the original had features I really
liked which I haven't found in dumbed-down, modern chat software. Examples:

\- status and visibility could be controlled for each contact at a granular
level

\- locally-stored, fully searchable chat history that gave results in a
sensible manner and which you could migrate to new computers

\- notification intrusiveness (ding, flash, etc) could be adjusted with one or
two clicks

\- dense UI (less whitespace meant more information packed into a smaller
window that took up less of my screen)

\- hitting X actually exited the program

~~~
alxlaz
> \- dense UI (less whitespace meant more information packed into a smaller
> window that took up less of my screen)

Yesterday's thread about DECUS and HP's OpenVMS hobbyist program opened a can
of nostalgia worms so I remembered that my first laptop was a late-Digital era
11"-screen laptop with a pretty low-res screen (800x600, I think?).

I used ICQ on it and its interface was about as awkward as Skype's is today --
except _today_ I'm running Skype on a laptop with about twice the screen
estate. It's a little silly that all that research work in the industry -- and
all that money I've paid -- went into screens that I now use just to display
more whitespace.

I know it's supposed to help with touch screens but a) my laptop -- like most
laptops currently in use -- doesn't have one and b) this isn't 1997 anymore,
UI toolkits today make it trivial to adjust element sizes and paddings so that
they're appropriate to whatever pointing device is currently in use.

~~~
badsectoracula
Which version of ICQ are you referring to? I was running ICQ on a 640x480
monitor back then and i remember it having a very compact window[0] which i
always had it visible.

[0]
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjOHmkFVAAUPzx6.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjOHmkFVAAUPzx6.jpg)

~~~
alxlaz
It's been so long I really can't recall anymore. (Edit: but just like you, I
do remember that I had the ICQ window visible at pretty much all times, and I
could comfortably fit an Emacs window, the contact window a chat window on my
desktop's 1024x768 screen.)

That being said, the window in that screenshot is about 200 x 320 px. It would
have taken about a third of the horizontal space of the screen, and about
2/3rds of the vertical space of a 640x480 screen. It was certainly usable --
way, way more usable than Skype on a full HD monitor today -- but lots of
stuff was claustrophobic in 640x480.

(Then again, most modern apps are practically unusable if you resize their
window to 640x480...)

~~~
badsectoracula
Sadly Skype and similar programs tend to take more physical space on my
monitor than ICQ (and MSN Messenger, especially the original versions like the
one included in Windows XP) ever did :-/

------
seapunk
I would like to hear this sound
[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iCPIUGnHQ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iCPIUGnHQ8)]
on the landing page.

~~~
Diederich
In 1999, my future wife and I, after an initial in person meeting, chatted
incessantly over ICQ. It's how we really got to know each other.

To this day, this 'uh-oh!' sound makes me tingle all over.

~~~
seapunk
I think you can thank Mirabilis founders! So much people have good memories
thanks to ICQ.

~~~
tehlike
Yup. It also had random chat feature which i enjoyed quite a lot. Made my
first online friends (whom i ended up meeting in real life, and are still
friends with to date).

------
klyrs
ICQ was cool, but at the time it was just another chat service that I used
through Trillian. I really miss Trillian these days

~~~
pferde
Remember about 20 years ago, when it was about protocols and not about brand
names? You could have all the chat services in one client, complete with
merging contacts from different services.

Nowadays, you have to jump through hoops to get even a few of the messaging
services in one program, it's clunky and barely works, and you'd be breaking
terms of service of half of them. Also, it would break anyway in a week or
two, because the service owner changed something in the proprietary protocol.

Fortunately, with Matrix and a few other pioneers, it's getting better again,
but in the meantime, there is an entire generation used to having their
communication hamstrung by american corporations.

~~~
smacktoward
It was all about brand names 20 years ago too. None of the big IM services of
the time were interoperable. The only reason Trillian worked was because its
developers put enormous amounts of work into reverse-engineering proprietary,
undocumented chat protocols. Periodically a protocol would change, and then
Trillian would stop working with that service until the developers could crack
it again. At one point AOL got serious enough about blocking Trillian access
to AIM that they were changing the protocol every couple of days.

I guess what I’m saying is, things sucked just as much then as they do now.
Maybe more! Sigh.

~~~
dkonofalski
That's not necessarily true. Jabber was a huge protocol already and IRC was
big too and those were not about brand names. Jabber was even so ubiquitous
that Google Chat/Talk both used it as a backend. You could add Google Chat to
any client that supported Jabber. It wasn't until AOL got wind of AIM being a
way to grab more ads and cash that things changed.

~~~
smacktoward
Twenty years ago was the year 2000. Trillian first shipped as freeware that
year, and shipped its for-pay "Pro" version in 2002. Jabber/XMPP development
only started in 1999, and didn't reach RFC status until 2004. Google Talk
didn't ship until 2005, and didn't support federation until 2006. The heyday
of "XMPP all the things" was from 2008-2012 or so, with the high water mark
being the adoption of XMPP by Facebook Chat circa 2010. (A decision they
eventually reversed a few years later.)

IRC was of course always open, but that's kind of orthogonal to this
discussion as it never really had any traction with the general public the way
AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, etc. did.

------
z3t4
I still remember my ICQ number. A few people used AOL/AIM, but ICQ was very
popular for some time, I had more contacts on ICQ then I ever had on Facebook.
Then Microsoft shipped their own Messenger pre-installed on Windows, and
people started using Messenger instead. Then came Skype, which replaced the
desktop phone. And more and more moved over to Skype. Then there was clients
that allowed you to use both AIM, ICQ, Messenger and Skype) finally you could
have all your contacts in one place. But Google also wanted to join the game,
launched their own G-talk, then bought and shutdown one of the most popular
multi-clients... So what should I use at this point? Lets go with Skype. Then
Microsoft bough Skype. And kinda crippled it... So people started to use the
chat on Facebook... And then the Smartphone market become really huge. So the
big players turned their focus on mobile. Opening a void on desktop, which was
later filled by Slack...

------
dmazin
Strange that there is no mention of encryption... which is the very first
thing I want to see mentioned. I am happy to see a new app because I _do_ feel
like there's still no chat app that checks all the boxes (not owned by an
advertising-funded/creepy company, E2E, great UI, no weird home-grown ciphers,
not funded by the US gov't, cross-platform). But E2E is an absolute must.

~~~
dagenix
How do you feel about it being under the control of the Russian government?

~~~
dmazin
(As a Russian) I feel worse about the Russian gov't -- Signal's American gov't
funding is a red flag, but afaik Signal has not been compromised by this
(Signal's awful UI is why I don't use it).

On the other hand, if Yandex or VK had an E2E chat (maybe they do), I would
not trust it at all.

~~~
ficklepickle
What is awful about the UI? I have found it to be pretty simple and easy to
use. Mind you I've been using it for < 1 year so maybe it used to be
different.

~~~
dmazin
Honestly, for me, the lack of a web app is a show-stopper.

------
godot
I hadn't used ICQ since the 90s and maybe early 2000s. The screenshots of ICQ
New on the site certainly look quite similar to Whatsapp Web. I'm kind of
surprised that there's active development in ICQ all these years even though I
don't know of anyone personally who still uses it. Maybe ICQ is active in
other parts of the world?

~~~
serf
>I don't know of anyone personally who still uses it.

I always liked ICQ, but there was always a tad bit of friction remembering
huge strings of numbers as practical IDs, and the naming schemes came way
later.

11984431 or whatever doesn't roll off the tongue very well.

~~~
jbergknoff
I have no idea how, but my 8 digit ICQ user id immediately springs to mind, 20
years later. The mind works in mysterious ways.

~~~
xnx
"591007" does that make me and ICQ OG?

~~~
konart
344838

But Mail.ru deleted old accounts. So...

~~~
zten
Might want to check, I logged into mine (272605) recently

~~~
konart
I did. I wouldn't write it without checking. I was able to log in half a year
ago or so. But now - [https://icq.im/344838](https://icq.im/344838) [Deleted]

They even tell you that you can't restore in anymore.

------
tambourine_man
Open source? Open protocols?

If not, not interested. We have plenty of proprietary instant messages
already.

------
duskwuff
Maybe it's just a matter of what I'm familiar with, but this feels eerily
similar to Telegram. Both the feature set and the UI are extremely similar.

I wonder how much of this is intentional, or if it's just a case of convergent
evolution? The adversarial relationship between ICQ (with connections to
Russian oligarchs) and Telegram (with connections to Russian dissidents) makes
this feel unlikely to be coincidence.

~~~
grogenaut
Icq definitely stole a lot from telegram.

~~~
maqp
Haha. The entire Russian tech scene is about copying western products. Pavel
copied VKontakte back when Facebook was starting. When he released Telegram it
was the spitting image of WhatsApp. You might be right but Telegram's not on a
high horse here.

------
jader201
What the heck is going on with its mobile site?

I have to scroll right to see the other ~60%+ of its content, and there’s no
way to zoom out to fit it all in, even at a smaller scale.

~~~
runawaybottle
What’s the excuse for this now days? You didn’t test this on a standard phone
resolution with dev tools at a bare minimum?

~~~
barbs
Pretty funny considering it's an old product trying to be relevant again.

"Why test the website on phones? Who uses messaging apps on their phone
anyway?"

~~~
e_proxus
It’s even weirder because 80% of the screenshots are of the mobile app.

------
htatche
It ticks a lot of boxes looking at the landing page. However, I'm surprised by
the lack of a really important keyword: privacy.

~~~
ryanisnan
Read the privacy policy.

tl;dr - they don't encrypt anything, are owned by a russian company, and take
no responsibility for the leaking of your data.

------
diimdeep
Oh my god. So much memories..

Year - 2004. Place - Moscow Russia. Before Facebook(or Russian VK).

High school. Everyone I know using mIRC chats in my city supported by local
ISP and using ICQ.

I had Nokia 6280 phone with S40 OS and using ICQ on it with J2ME app 'JIMM'
that looked like this[0][1]

At that time in 2004 it was like magic, it was so cheap to chat with status
messages and Emojis, not paying for SMS.

And desktop clients of that era like QIP or Miranda IM[1] were so minimalistic
and extensible.

And yeah I remember purchasing good looking ICQ number 94444911 on some shady
auction, fun time

[0]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/b/b5/Jimm_screen.p...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/b/b5/Jimm_screen.png)
[1]
[https://cs7.pikabu.ru/post_img/2014/08/04/12/1407181990_1167...](https://cs7.pikabu.ru/post_img/2014/08/04/12/1407181990_1167753841.png)
[1] [https://www.miranda-ng.org/en/](https://www.miranda-ng.org/en/)

------
brenden2
I don't trust new products anymore, especially anything like a new chat app. I
don't install new apps. I'm more willing to try something if they have a
website that works in incognito mode and doesn't require a phone number to
create an account.

~~~
ricardobeat
ICQ came out around 1997!

~~~
elandrum
This doesn't appear to have anything to do with 1997 ICQ besides the name.

~~~
ricardobeat
I just logged in with my 23-year-old account, pretty sure it's the same. Kind
of unsettling to see all the contacts still there!

~~~
tracker1
wild... I haven't been able to use my old account for a very long time...
created a new one a few years back, tried that one... neither seem to work...

I don't want to make a new one tied to my phone number.

------
malthaus
Haven't used it in years but still remember my number: 1315980 and that
godforsaken "uh-oh" sound.

Way to ruin the nostalgia with such a poor reboot. it's a shame so many of the
old internet 1.0 brands are rotting away.

------
systemvoltage
What's the differentiating factor? Cursory look at it - I don't see strong E2E
encryption or anything besides a bog standard messaging app. We have many -
whatsapp, facebook messenger, imessage, hangouts, telegram, signal, wechat,
etc.

> Convert audio messages to text, use smart replies, stay online even with bad
> internet connection

That doesn't cut it, IMO. In fact it is repulsing me (offline apps are great)
but I don't want to convert audio messages to text unless that happens
locally. Fuck smart replies, no thanks.

~~~
BrandonY
Yeah, that's weird. If you're going to announce a new instant messaging
system, you will of course provide some reason why people should go through
the effort to switch. The front page should be brimming with the pitch.
"Unlike WhatsApp, with New ICQ, you can _____." What goes in the blank? Why
haven't you told me?

------
remmargorp64
Back in the day, ICQ's most unique feature that it offered was the "Live Chat"
feature with split panes, where you could see what people were typing
literally as they typed it (including when they pressed backspace to correct
mistakes).

I don't understand why no other popular chat app has ever brought that feature
back. It really gave the chats a sense of humanity and conversational
connectedness. You could even rewind and play back the conversations!

------
say_it_as_it_is
A product of Mail.ru? _closes browser tab_

------
tracker1
Can't seem to create an account without a phone number... what happens if my
phone number changes?

------
icqnew
Hi everyone! Wow. We are impressed with so many comments regarding ICQ New.

We've found a lot of nostalgic mentions here, and we want to say that we have
the same feelings. But it's similar to looking through the school photo album.
It's nice to remember but now you are another person who live in the next
decade.

Sooo...welcome to ICQ New with group-calls up to 30 people, smart replies and
conversion of voice messages into text!

We'll be appreciate for any feedback, feature requests and opinions. Share it
with us here or right in ICQ: side menu — report an error.

See you!

------
orthecreedence
Oh my god why do people make websites with scrolling like this? It's such a
weird and frustrating experience, and it seems like people are doing it _more_
as time goes on.

~~~
heyflyguy
just try resizing the window and you'll cry!

------
1-6
I can't resurrect my old ICQ number? It was short too.

~~~
stingraycharles
Apart from my old phone number, my old ICQ number (and GeoCities address) is
something I still know by heart. I would love it if I could get it back.

------
jjordan
Are 6-digit ICQ numbers still considered cool?

~~~
sashk
idk, but mine no longer works -- they deleted old numbers before releasing
this new icq.

~~~
paranoidrobot
I just logged in with mine, 134xxxxx

~~~
mod
8 digits?

------
pmlnr
This makes me sad. I honestly thought ICQ will make a come back one day as
retro. Not any more.

Interesting read about the old one:
[https://medium.com/@Dimitryophoto/icq-20-years-is-no-
limit-8...](https://medium.com/@Dimitryophoto/icq-20-years-is-no-
limit-8734e1eea8ea)

------
ganzuul
I would use ICQ like it was back in the day, but the privacy violations of
today's ICQ makes it impossible for me.

------
mvexel
This post made me install the ICQ "uh oh!" new message sound as notification
sound on my phone. It is higher pitched than I remember it.

I still remember my UIN, but I don't think 'new ICQ' uses those? I tried
logging in on the web site, but I am unable to recover my password using my
UIN.

------
woogiee
uh oh!

------
Mikho
If it wasn't owned by Russian corporation Mail.ru--which is under full control
of FSB and Russian government--my nostalgia would give it a try. But no way
I'd install anything on my devices that Russian security service has direct
access to.

------
ChrisArchitect
it's incredible to me that ICQ still going. Obviously it died down in
worldwide/western popularity early 2000s but I do know it continued to be used
in Russia and some other places. Kinda amazing and I'll always respect the
original development coming out of Israel. Fond memories of those late 90s
days when it was the standard.

With the random chance of any app with the right timing/reach and features to
gain some traction (see whatsapp) etc, guess they figure why not put ourselves
out there again hehe

------
huangc10
Good ol ICQ. Back in the day when devs/general population thought identifying
yourselves with a 10 digit number is easier than an email address...good ol
days...

------
golergka
Please, be aware that ICQ was bought by Mail.ru - russian company owned by
oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who's very connected to russian crooked elite. It's
the company which was used for a hostile takevoer of VK.com from it's founder
after it wouldn't censor it's content. It's voluntarily provided private data
about it's users to the state (far outside of what's required by law) and was
involved in a number of similar breach of privacy cases.

Basically, it's company in the pocket of russian government, and you should
use any of it's product if you completely disregard your privacy.

~~~
maqp
To add, never rely on products that require you to trust the company respects
your privacy. E.g. Telegram lacks ubiquitous end-to-end encryption (E2EE) so
even if the company chooses not to abuse the insane amounts of valuable data,
nation state hackers are most interested in hacking these centralized troves
of data. Not even opt-in E2EE is good because that leaks metadata about desire
to use proper encryption. Always use apps that are E2EE by default (e.g.
Signal) to ensure you're not leaking content or metadata about wanting to keep
discussion hidden.

~~~
zzzcpan
_> To add, never rely on products that require you to trust the company
respects your privacy. _

_> Always use apps that are E2EE by default (e.g. Signal)_

You are contradicting yourself here. You are required to trust Signal the
company to respect your privacy, to trust that it's actually doing end-to-end
encryption, doing it properly and doesn't issue an update breaking it because
of some secret US government order. Because Signal controls software
distribution, it's pretty much just a binary blob that some guy from Signal
can update any time.

A proper end-to-end encryption at minimum requires an open source
implementations and distribution to avoid trusting the company to respect your
privacy, since this is the primary reason for end-to-end encryption to exist.
Otherwise incentives are misaligned and it will be broken by the same company
it is supposed to protect from as soon as they need your messages for
something.

~~~
maqp
You aren't required to trust Signal.

You can read the source, you can compile it yourself, and you can use it.

You can also do a reproducible build and check that it matches the hash of the
APK served by the play store.

"Open source distribution?" What is that? If you can't trust the vendor, no
F-Droid is going to help there. If you need to verify the source, you need to
do it yourself.

>some secret US government order

Explain how that would work on legal level when compelled speech violates the
constitution.

Your reasoning isn't exactly solid.

~~~
zzzcpan
_> You can read the source, you can compile it yourself, and you can use it._

I can read some source code they provide, not necessarily what everyone has
installed at any given moment. Even if I could review it and compile it and
run it the other ends of end-to-end won't, so I still have to trust Signal the
company to not violate the other ends.

Open source distribution means packages in various open source repositories,
not controlled by software vendors.

 _> If you can't trust the vendor, no F-Droid is going to help there._

F-Droid model is exactly what's going to help with not having to trust the
vendor. It's sort of an infrastructure to reduce trust in software vendors.
Independent parties maintaining forks and packages are more likely to notice
if vendor does something stupid, more likely to have people and tools to
verify claims and implementations, provide a way for independent
implementations.

 _> Explain how that would work on legal level when compelled speech violates
the constitution._

It doesn't matter, they can come up with plenty of bullshit excuses claiming
child porn or whatever. The important thing is you have to trust Signal the
company, the US government, the legal system, etc.

~~~
maqp
>not necessarily what everyone has installed at any given moment

That applies to any distribution mechanism.

>I still have to trust Signal the company to not violate the other ends.

99% of people are going to download the app from Play store, even if F-Droid
was available. You're screwed.

>It's sort of an infrastructure to reduce trust in software vendors.

Oh dear god. No. It's just more steps into distribution chain the user needs
to trust.

>Independent parties maintaining forks and packages are more likely to notice
if vendor does something stupid,

The same people might look at Signal's main repository for the same concern,
and notice the same things. Furthermore, Signal is the entity innovating on
secure messaging protocols, so I wouldn't say the chances are they're doing
stupid things.

>more likely to have people and tools to verify claims and implementations

No. Nobody's looking at some John Smith's Signal fork. Besides, using such
fork is an incredibly dangerous weak point, from the maintainer's improper
singing key storage and signing process, to just having to trust random
maintainers. Absolutely no.

>It doesn't matter, they can come up with plenty of bullshit excuses claiming
child porn or whatever.

So I take it you're not just clueless, you're also not following the news
[https://signal.org/blog/earn-it/](https://signal.org/blog/earn-it/)

>The important thing is you have to trust Signal the company

The literal point of the ubiquitous E2EE, FOSS codebase with reproducible
builds is to eliminate the need to trust them. The FUD you're spreading is
incredibly damaging.

~~~
zzzcpan
Again, that whole point of end-to-end encryption that allows it to eliminate
the need to trust the vendor only works if the vendor isn't the one supplying
said end-to-end encryption. Please don't make arguments that "Signal does this
or that you can trust them", you do not eliminate the need to trust them this
way at all. If you do have to trust them not to spy on you, it's not a proper
"end-to-end" encryption, simple as that, it's effectively the same thing as a
regular TLS encryption to the servers, where you have to trust them not to spy
on you on the servers. And in either case that trust will be eventually
violated, because there is no incentive not to, but plenty of pressure and
incentives to violate it.

I don't know what's so confusing about it. You like Signal and trust them,
that's fine, but I don't trust them or anything coming from the US, I really
would like to eliminate such trust. Claiming that I don't have to trust them
is unproductive and a lie.

~~~
maqp
>Again, that whole point of end-to-end encryption that allows it to eliminate
the need to trust the vendor only works if the vendor isn't the one supplying
said end-to-end encryption.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Vendor supplies the E2EE, users and
experts review it, and then if it changes, review changes. Third parties can
trivially make edits to their forks and that's the easiest backdoor possible.
How can you not see that.

>Please don't make arguments that "Signal does this or that you can trust
them", you do not eliminate the need to trust them this way at all.

I already explained there are technical measures in place that allow you to
verify the build you're using yourself. You're clearly not a subject matter
expert here so I suggest you move on.

> If you do have to trust them not to spy on you, it's not a proper "end-to-
> end" encryption, simple as that

You're arguing from the wrong premise. You don't have to trust them.

>it's effectively the same thing as a regular TLS encryption to the servers,
where you have to trust them not to spy on you on the servers.

if Signal was doing an active MITM attack against their own encryption, that
would be eavesdropping which is a felony in the US.

>And in either case that trust will be eventually violated, because there is
no incentive not to, but plenty of pressure and incentives to violate it.

And somehow random repository maintainers are immune to pressure and
incentives. I get it, you're trolling.

>I don't know what's so confusing about it.

If you really stretch those brain cells of yours you might understand it one
day.

>You like Signal and trust them, that's fine, but I don't trust them or
anything coming from the US, I really would like to eliminate such trust.

Again, you don't have to trust Signal.

>Claiming that I don't have to trust them is unproductive and a lie.

So you ignore the concept of reproducible builds and just establish an opinion
with average-joe level reasoning.

I won't waste my time further.

~~~
zzzcpan
_> there are technical measures in place that allow you to verify the build
you're using yourself. _

There are no technical measures for Signal in place that allow anyone to
verify the build all ends of said end-to-end encryption are running nor any
technical measures to ensure the software they are running won't be updated
with compromised end-to-end encryption by the vendor in the future. The
measures I talk about address both points by removing trust from the vendor
and distributing it across many independent entities.

 _> if Signal was doing an active MITM attack against their own encryption,
that would be eavesdropping which is a felony in the US._

It's not just legal anywhere in the world, it's what a lot of software already
does.

Anyway, if end-to-end encryption requires the exact same level of trust as
TLS, there is no point in it. It's only useful in truly open source
messengers, not Signal, Whatsapp or other binary blob centralizedly controlled
messengers.

~~~
maqp
>There are no technical measures for Signal in place that allow anyone to
verify the build all ends of said end-to-end encryption

There is no technical measure in existence that allows that for any
application. This is called a nirvana fallacy.

> nor any technical measures to ensure the software they are running won't be
> updated with compromised end-to-end encryption by the vendor in the future.

That applies to all software that requires automatic software updates, i.e.
networked TCBs. You want something that doesn't require updating, you use
stronger model like TFC.

>The measures I talk about address both points by removing trust from the
vendor and distributing it across many independent entities.

And users are going to compare diffs of multiple vendors for every update to
see nothing malicious was added? Give me a break.

>It's not just legal anywhere in the world, it's what a lot of software
already does.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.

>Anyway, if end-to-end encryption requires the exact same level of trust as
TLS, there is no point in it.

And this is the general whataboutism propaganda I run into all the time.
"There is no perfect E2EE model, therefore using it doesn't matter".

Forward secrecy and risk of legal trouble are two perfectly valid reasons to
use just opportunistic E2EE, even if you don't authenticate the keys.

May the rest of the community credit your "ideas" with the silence they
deserve.

------
robjan
The killer feature for me would be sending photos in original quality cross
platform, but not sure if it's enough to warrant installing yet another IM
app.

~~~
philliphaydon
? LINE (what I use in Singapore) sends original photos. Don’t know about
what’s app. But I thought this was normal.

~~~
robjan
WhatsApp and Telegram (widely used in HK) compress down to around 500kb.

~~~
ComodoHacker
Telegram offers to send photo "as a file", unaltered.

------
_pmf_
Everybody's scrambling to find their own credentials.

------
whoevercares
Tencent started its business from QICQ which became QQ. In a sense ICQ was
part of the reason it becomes a multi-billion business. Respect

------
tryptophan
Uhh, what even is ICQ and what is it for? Some sort of chat app? The website
is super fancy but fails to answer this simple question.

~~~
Diederich
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ)

It's one of the earliest fairly widely used instant messaging apps.

------
welly
There is absolutely no good reason to use this.

------
longemen3000
I wanted that domain for "ingeniería civil quimica" (chemical engineering),
before it was from a gym

------
wjp3
I had a 6-digit account number. I can't remember the whole thing, but it
started 153... good memories.

------
paddlesteamer
Why someone would need another messenger? Especially without E2EE?

I think tomorrow I'll bring back myspace.

------
latortuga
It seems to be yet another messaging app to compete with Signal, iMessage,
WhatsApp, Telegram, maybe there's some google product too (formerly Allo)?
Unlike iMessage and Signal, no requirement for a phone number. Maybe owned by
big brother? Seems to be a product of mail.ru.

Still a centralized messaging service though. I'm sticking with Signal I
think.

------
mikehollinger
... i wish i could remember my ICQ number. And the password. And what my
username was. ;-)

------
pachico
Dammit, until a few years ago I remembered my id, which was only 6 digits
long.

~~~
quicklime
It looks like you need to provide a phone number to use this new service, so I
guess it's just another WhatsApp clone, with nostalgic branding.

It would be awesome to be able to use your old icq number and hear the "uh oh"
notification sound - nostalgia is about the whole experience not just brands.

~~~
pachico
Indeed it would. I would actually love to read those conversations again. It
was '96? '97?

------
floatingatoll
[https://privacy.icq.com/legal/privacypolicy/en](https://privacy.icq.com/legal/privacypolicy/en)

Please take a moment to review this privacy policy before signing up; for
example, it does not indicate any intention to comply with EU, GDPR, CCPA,
etc. privacy laws or guarantees in any respect whatsoever.

------
chaz6
It is surprising to see a service launching in 2020 with no IPv6 support.

------
fnord123
The screenshot: "Dark theme" "Battery saving". lol

------
r2sk5t
Should be called ICQ Old.

App is extremely aggressive asking for location and contact access.

Net!

------
jbverschoor
But they deleted all ICQ numbers a short while ago

~~~
bdcravens
I just logged into my ICQ # registered in 1997.

~~~
jbverschoor
Well that's strangs.. now it works..

------
qwerty456127
I miss ICQ's numeric UINs so much.

------
znpy
A bad Telegram ripoff, basically.

~~~
maqp
And Telegram is a ripoff of WhatsApp.

~~~
kome
I would say the contrary, WhatsApp is Telegram with 1 year lag.

~~~
maqp
No, when Telegram was published, it had identical UI to that of WhatsApp,
although people seem to have conveniently forgotten this fact. Also, Telegram
is still lacking basic E2EE for group chats, and you also can't have E2EE on
desktop, so any "feature" they might implement is not an actual feature
because it's not secure.

~~~
kome
WhatsApp is closed source tho, so, how anybody would trust it?

~~~
maqp
You're right of course. We we should have a preferred order. Let's define
conditions as something common like group chat. Let's also define backdoor as
something that allows any non-group member to read the messages.

1\. Signal: Open source with E2EE group chats. Best choice, let's use that.

2\. WhatsApp, Proprietary with E2EE group chats. E2EE implementation might
have a backdoor with some probability. Let's avoid it if we can.

3\. Telegram: Open source client with no E2EE group chats. The implementation
leaks all group chats to server and anyone who hacks the server, and there's
nothing we can do. It's backdoored by design. Let's avoid it at all costs.

------
TheDesolate0
Holy shit! what year is this?

~~~
nurettin
I'd say we are roughly in the era of milking old franchises.

------
lsh123
Sometimes They Come Back

------
finphil
Memories... （⊙ｏ⊙）

------
hendry
46.8 megs xz compressed for linux, no thanks -2386684

------
supervillain
The real reason why Mirabilis ICQ become unpopular.

On the height of their popularity, they started naming their products
appending either "devil" and "demon" to their products.

Of course, most people who are conservatives back then like parents, aunts,
99% of the their users, basically other than "you" the power users didn't like
the new naming.

So they move-on to Yahoo Messenger and never looked back.

Moral: Don't name your popular product like how Mirabilis ICQ does it back in
the late 90s.

------
spxans
For those not aware, ICQ is owned by Mail.Ru Group controlled by Alisher
Usmanov, one of Putin's oligarch friends

~~~
sergiotapia
Do you also avoid chinese companies like Riot Games, Epic Games, Tik Tok and
others? What about chinese backed movies?

~~~
duxup
That person might ...

But I could see not avoiding games, but very much wanting to avoid
communications software.

------
sys_64738
It's owned by Russians.

~~~
jsjddbbwj
And the original was owned by Israelis

~~~
maqp
So do we agree it was never good, or that it doesn't matter it's as insecure
now as it was back then? Do we see reason or succumb to whataboutism?

~~~
jsjddbbwj
I agree with both your arguments.

------
kome
say hi: 644282

------
javidran
hmm

------
WA
ICQ means _I seek you_. Just in case you wondered.

~~~
C19is20
Xkcd 10,000.

------
kylebenzle
Yes, yes yes yes yes!

