Of the fourteen cases in which ICQ was involved, in six cases the capturing of information occurred before the seizure of the device. The article examined 34 sentences of Russian courts, during the investigation of which the evidence of the defendants' guilt was obtained by reading correspondence on a PC or mobile devices. What's happened since? ICQ's entry on Wikipedia cites a 2018 article in a Russia newspaper.Īccording to a Novaya Gazeta article published in May 2018, Russian intelligence agencies have access to online reading of ICQ users' correspondence. In fact, you can almost tell the history of ICQ just with Slashdot headlines. He has since connected with more than two dozen friends on the platform after some bristled this month at a privacy policy update by WhatsApp that would allow some data to be stored on parent Facebook Inc.'s servers.īack in 1998 Slashdot's CmdrTaco wrote a story about ICQ being ported to Palm Pilot, and linked to a Wired story about ICQ security flaws.

'It recalls my childhood memories,' said 30-year-old risk consultant Anthony Wong, who used ICQ when he was in grade school. Lately it has skyrocketed up Hong Kong's app charts, with downloads jumping 35-fold in the week ending Jan. It's been modernized over the years, and now is an app for smartphones. It was a precursor to AOL Instant Messenger, and was last in vogue when the TV show 'Friends' was in its prime and PalmPilots were cutting edge. ICQ was a pioneering, mid-1990s internet messaging service then used on bulky PCs on dial-up. Here's an interesting tidbit from The Wall Street Journal:

Icq messenger history notification