ICQ

Used to love this site years ago. Tried to reconnect w/ some ppl I know abroad by looking them up on ICQ but... first you need to download the software, then you cannot use your old number by asking for lost password unless you remember the old number. You must start from scratch and get a new number. This means you've lost your old contacts. Which defeats the purpose of using it again. No wonder fb took over so easily.

This is a stupid program. It's so hard to sign up me and my friend have been trying for half an hour. I search contact with her email and phone number and she doesn't come up.
I can't add my email address which isn't linked to my account. I keep going around in a loop.
I'm trying something else

I still use icq messenger from time to time, although I don't use this way of communication anymore. But icq remained the best program of this type for me, leaving far behind msn messenger and other similar programs. Cute and has its own spirit. Recommended.

I've used this program since 2000. I tried to set it up for a customer to use as inter-office chat but now they require a text to a cell phone to validate a new account. It used to require only an email address which I thought was reasonable.

No way an I sending 5 mobile numbers to Russia - The hacking capitol of the world!
http://time.com/*******/the-worlds-5-cybercrime-hotspots/

The true value of early ICQs 98a/b was that you locate people and make friends by; Gender, Age, Country, City or towns. All that seems to have vanished now with the later versions (and owners) of ICQ. I guess the older 98 versions were too good to last.

You see, the problems with this site is that: One, you can't edit your profile online. You got to download the ICQ Program. Next, there are spammers and scammers on the chatroom and all over ICQ like no website I ever used before. And finally the Chat Staff are Politically Correct Totalitarian Dictators. I can't really see one thing good about ICQ at all. Sorry, I just can't.

ICQ was the pioneer of the chat systems along with mIRC. Yet it turned out that the conversations via ICQ are easy logged and with the rise of Skype many people switched over hoping that the P2P protocol of Skype will allow for more privacy. While I consider that a myth nowadays I rarely stumble on people who are still using their ICQ accounts.