Representatives of the Mail.Ru Group (owners of ICQ) confirmed to  information about disabling the protocol, “which has not been supported for a long time and in which there are not many new good features”. Among them – calls, audio messages, stickers and group chats.

ICQ was popular in the early 2000s, but with the advent of new instant messengers and social networks, it lost its relevance. Representatives of the service did not disclose current statistics on the ICQ audience. The company last publicly disclosed this data in 2013 — it amounted to 11 million users worldwide (including 6.7 million from Russia). It is not known what part of them uses unofficial clients.

Despite the decline in popularity, “ICQ” is still used by work or by habit. Some users of third-party clients announced the “death of ICQ” and stated that they would not switch to the official application.

Binding UIN to phone number

In social networks complained that the UIN in the official client is tied to the phone number, which is why it is impossible to create several accounts. There were also added concerns about the security of personal data: in May, Novaya Gazeta found evidence in the sentences of reading the ICQ correspondence by secret services (the messenger representatives denied the data). On the Antichat forum, old UIN numbers are often indicated as contacts for anonymity.

“ICQ systematically refuses UIN,” suggested users. Representatives of the messenger told that UIN would be enough to enter the application. But they also stressed that in May 2019, the rules for identifying users of instant messengers by telephone number, which actually prohibit their anonymous use, come into force .

The user “Habra” said that ICQ is trying to get phone numbers using locks. The owners of third-party clients were banned from sending messages, and each time they tried, they wrote: “Perhaps the attackers managed to gain access to your account. Please follow the link to unlock. ” By reference, users were asked to bind a phone number.

At Habré, they noted that such a move “pulls on phishing” – the service in the request indicated the domain icq-support.com , which simply redirects to the ICQ homepage. At the same time, users have encountered similar blocking before: back in 2015, support for the messenger in response to complaints offered to bind a phone number.

In ICQ, was informed that at the end of December 2018, some ICQ users were blocked by mistake – a technical failure of the antispam system occurred.

What do third-party users do next?

QIP 2005/2012, Miranda and Pidgin remain relatively popular third-party clients for ICQ. All of them work on the old protocol, which Mail.Ru Group got from the previous owner of the AOL messenger. Among the advantages of unofficial clients is the lack of binding to a phone number, “ease” (minimum of optional functions), support for several accounts and plug-ins, easy access to the history of correspondence, and in the QIP there is also a classic yellow emoji.

Some users in social networks and on “Habré” noted that they would rather give up on ICQ rather than switch to the official client, so they began to look for ways out. And they are:

• The developers of Miranda on the forum said they would try to implement support for the new protocol, but without stickers and other functions. Other clients can go into this scenario. Otherwise, you just have to stop supporting ICQ accounts;
• On “Habré” unofficial clients remembered, which were already written under the new protocol. Example – Mandarin IM for Android.