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ICQ blocked alternative clients - once again.
15 years ago
General
Great. ICQ blocks non-ICQ clients since yesterday, once again.
Let me sum it up:
- They change the protocol to break alternative clients from time to time.
- The original client, the last time I had to install it for someone, infested the autorun and even put a toolbar into the browser. Lots of ads, high resource usage etc. Secure?
- They were owned by AOL before, those who spread tons of Ad-CDs and oder type of ads causing lots of waste.
- They are now owned by a Russian company, under Russian laws (not US anymore, tho that was not that much better), working togeter with the Russian secret service and the best of it, a few dubius chinese companies.
-Their terms of use give all interlectual propperty of transmitted text to them. Eventho this would be a bit difficult to apply in US-law and especially in other countries, it still basically means any source-code, songtext, poem etc. sent over ICQ would belong to AOL / now Digital Sky Technologies.
These and more things can be read on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ#Criticism
Alternatives:
Do you have a Google account? Livejournal, Nimbuzz? A german fur, having an eMail-account at GMX? Web.de? StudiVZ-Chat?
Congratulations, you already own a XMPP (Jabber) compatible account!
Jabber ist an open protocol that - if used correctly which not all of the mentioned above server provider do =( - has many atvantags over other protocols. Including filetransfers, voicechat, transports (use icq/yahoo/msn/etc accounts through a single jabber account and thus single client!) and full SSL encryption. Many popular multi-protocol clients support jabber (Miranda, Trillian, Gaim, Adium). (more clients: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_.....n_XMPP-Clients)
Try logging in to one of the above mentioned services with you existing account and add me: rnd[at]jabber.ccc.de =3 I am also happy to give nerdy-rat-help if needed.
And even if people still prefer more colorful and flashy things like yahoo or msn - fine with me. These are still somewhat better than ICQ. Lets just get rid of ICQ!
- Token
[edit]
If you client supports setting the login-server, change it to 'login.icq.com'. That one accepts the passwords and works with alternative clients again.
Let me sum it up:
- They change the protocol to break alternative clients from time to time.
- The original client, the last time I had to install it for someone, infested the autorun and even put a toolbar into the browser. Lots of ads, high resource usage etc. Secure?
- They were owned by AOL before, those who spread tons of Ad-CDs and oder type of ads causing lots of waste.
- They are now owned by a Russian company, under Russian laws (not US anymore, tho that was not that much better), working togeter with the Russian secret service and the best of it, a few dubius chinese companies.
-Their terms of use give all interlectual propperty of transmitted text to them. Eventho this would be a bit difficult to apply in US-law and especially in other countries, it still basically means any source-code, songtext, poem etc. sent over ICQ would belong to AOL / now Digital Sky Technologies.
These and more things can be read on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ#Criticism
Alternatives:
Do you have a Google account? Livejournal, Nimbuzz? A german fur, having an eMail-account at GMX? Web.de? StudiVZ-Chat?
Congratulations, you already own a XMPP (Jabber) compatible account!
Jabber ist an open protocol that - if used correctly which not all of the mentioned above server provider do =( - has many atvantags over other protocols. Including filetransfers, voicechat, transports (use icq/yahoo/msn/etc accounts through a single jabber account and thus single client!) and full SSL encryption. Many popular multi-protocol clients support jabber (Miranda, Trillian, Gaim, Adium). (more clients: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_.....n_XMPP-Clients)
Try logging in to one of the above mentioned services with you existing account and add me: rnd[at]jabber.ccc.de =3 I am also happy to give nerdy-rat-help if needed.
And even if people still prefer more colorful and flashy things like yahoo or msn - fine with me. These are still somewhat better than ICQ. Lets just get rid of ICQ!
- Token
[edit]
If you client supports setting the login-server, change it to 'login.icq.com'. That one accepts the passwords and works with alternative clients again.
