Tip: Setting Falkland Islands as my location and clearing age and gender helped me get about 95% less spam in Skype. (On ICQ the decrease in spam was noticable, but not so big).

I still have one but I never actually log in - got the 6 digit even (#924218). I didn't realize it was an active, viable service still. At least at a level of independent value that makes it worth selling off.

I'm #575061. We are the ones in the first million, huh!

It's impressive how quickly a company can lose such an impressive market share.

Yup - it was pervasive when I first used it. It was an amazing way to tie in people from diff. online communities with whom I'd otherwise have much less interaction.

At one point I recall them moving ICQ To the Oscar (early AIM) protocol but it was dying by then, replaced with the other 800000 IM systems available.

I have a 6-digit UIN, and I get bombarded daily with russian spam.

Then again, I almost never talk to someone over ICQ so I could just shut it down, but then again I'm running Miranda so one more protocol doesn't bother me much.

I too have a 6 digit UID as well - We need some sort of automated whitelisting b/c the spam is just idiotic.

ICQ/OSCAR protocol is totally insecure in essence, any attempt to fight spam on ICQ network is futile. It's kind of same as with email/SMTP.