It was widely popular in Russia perhaps because '11984431' rolls off the tongue much better than explaining a string of latin characters like "s like dollar sign, not like the Russian s".

Same in China with numbers: https://newrepublic.com/article/117608/chinese-number-websit...

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.

Mysterious ways indeed... Somehow I remember and can recite a 16 character hex ID for my account on Flipnote Studio on the Nintendo DS

FCKGW, ring a bell?

What a weird thing to connect with a stranger on. I typed that so many times in my teenage years...

When I would reserve a book at the public library, I'd get an automated phone call when the book arrived. The phone call always began by listing off my library card number.

So I know my first library card number was 1000102772901. I had to replace the card a few times, getting new numbers, but I only ever remembered the first one.

As do i. 32939464 probably haven't touched it in near 20 years ( guessing about 18 ). And whilst nostalgia is great, it would be great to free up memory sections of the brain like this :)

That's funny! I tried to remember it and typed what came to mind first into gmail and I got a hit from an archived GoogleTalk session from 2006. Layers upon layers of computer archeology.

"591007" does that make me and ICQ OG?

Mine was six digit as well,but can't remember it other than the first digit was 8, so a bit after you signed up.

344838

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

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

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 [Deleted]

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

mine was 522826 but has probably been lost to the sands of time

Checking in, also 8 digits, still memorized all these years later.

Same for me. I don't remember virtually any other numbers.

72873246. Can’t remember my other number (same length, also starting with 7) but I have saved it somewhere. It was the main messenger in Germany when I grew up. It’s really not harder than remembering a phone number, and back then, I used it more often.

On the topic of New ICQ, it looks like all those other multi-user messengers. I wish everyone would switch to Jabber were there are clients for people who don’t have group messaging as their primary use case.