When I first got a computer in 1990 I spent a lot of time on ICQ and made quite a few friends there. After about a year I had to disconnect it due to computer problems. I reinstalled it on my new computer a few months ago - but all the people I knew before on it don’t use it any more …
Here’s what bugs me - every day I get 20 - 30 requests from people who say they want to talk. If I approve them - all the guys want to talk about is my sex life - when I last had sex, the intimate details, and have I got a webcam. They want to be told things that I’d be embarassed talking to my closest friends about … do they think I’m nuts!!! So the conversations don’t last long - either they get pissed off with me refusing to talk about sex or I put them on my ignore list.
Has anyone else had this experience recently? Has ICQ just become a place for sleaze merchants who have nothing better to do than trawl for potential victims?
Not that I don’t enjoy sex - but with a real person - not with a stranger drooling at a keyboard hundreds of miles away.
I think the chat medium as a whole is rapidly dropping into decadence… I don’t know about ICQ (never having used it) but I know that in AIM/MSN/Y! the minute you enter a chat room you’re apparently marked by 10,000 different bots who make it their mission to send you random IMs filled with porn links if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, you get what’s happening to you now: A bunch of sad people (read: teenagers) who just want to cyber all the time. And just so you know, this isn’t a uniquely male phenomenon; there’s plenty of (alleged) females out there who want nothing more than to find out every last detail about your sex life.
I think a huge part of the problem (which I’ve definitely encountered myself) is a lot of people use instant messaging for one thing, and one thing only. It isn’t difficult for them to find someone else who is also of the same mindset. I don’t think it occurs to them that people might use instant messaging for anything other than cybersex type activities. To them, if you’re on an IM client, you must be interested in cybersex too.
Every now and then it’s fun to mess with the cyber-freaks. Back in high school, at a friend’s house, we led this guy on for a long time. We eventually freaked him out by making absurd proposals. Of course, there’s nothing too absurd for some people, so it’s a risky game. But I think it’s better if I can make them walk away rather than fending them off. Have some fun with 'em…
I stopped using ICQ quite a while ago because of the sleazy sex-starved weirdos constantly messaging me. I was blocking a dozen new people a day, and I wasn’t on any public lists or anything.
MSN isn’t a problem (yet) because I have just my little list of friends. If a person tries to add me to their list, and I don’t recognize their e-mail, they’re refused. Easy as pie.
Someone told me that ICQ is better now and you can restrict who contacts you, but I’m not going back. Having random creeps offer to lick me is downright unpleasant.
I’ve used icq since the early 90’s and after a couple years I had the same problem with random creeps. I went through all my settings and found one that only allows messages from users on MY contact list. No more problem - only those I actually want to talk to can send me a message.
If you want to set this, go to Security & Privacy Permissions --> Spam Control
The first thing is “Accept messages only from users on my contact list.”
I’ve used ICQ pretty much since it was first released, and I still continue to use it, and maintain that it is superior to ALL other chat clients. It really truly saddens me that ICQ is falling so out of vogue in exchange for that piece of shit they call MSN.
Anyway, for a while there was a pretty bad issue with random sex messaging on ICQ. I don’t know what fixed it, but I never have a problem anymore. (In a rather morbid twist, it depresses me to think that perhaps the cesation has more to do with lack of interest in the ICQ client than anything else…)
I always got random sex messages that all turned out to be bots advertising teenage sex party webcams and the like. I stopped getting them when I switched to using Trillian, I don’t know if that was just timing and some sort of ICQ crackdown on porn spam, but I don’t get anything that isn’t from someone already on my contact list now. Actually, now I"m feeling left out ;).
There must have been some major crackdown recently my spam has dropped to near zero and I accept messages from everybody.
As for the OP what’s in your details? Words like sex, drugs, oral (even in a neutral context) and such will bring them out like flies. I can’t stress this enough when I had graphic language in my details I was constantly messaged after I changed it it slowed down considerably.
Clear out your age/sex categories as well. Or switch yours to male 85.
Stay in ‘hiding’ you’ll appear offline in the searches they usually want instant gratification.
And as someone else mentioned accept messages only from your contact list
Personally I have my ICQ wide open (I accept messages from people not on my list and I don’t have to authorize anyone to add me. I never get bothered b/c I’m always hiding and my details are blank)
My profile says “Clean chat only” as well as stating that I’m married with a kid. I don’t think people bother to read profiles. What cracks me up are the guys who start with “Are you married?” and when I say yes, the immediate response is “Happily?”
Incidentally, I’m listed in the “50 and over” category, not in the “Looking for Lust” or whatever it’s called. But I’m doing Trillian now, too, because I’ve got friends on several different chat programs and I don’t want to have them all up at once.
I used to use ICQ, then got pissed at it and never looked back. Personally I prefer MSN, for several reasons, my main three being
1)All my friends use MSN or Trillian
2)When I was on ICQ, no one on my friends list was ever online, but I kept getting e-cards from strangers (in hindsight, bots seem very likely)
3) I tried going back to ICQ a couple weeks ago. Since my e-mail has changed, I can’t retrieve my password.
Only now MSN (or rather, the people on MSN) is pissing me off. I’ll get people who just add me. No e-mail telling me who they are, no warning on a chatroom or anything. I don’t want to add them without knowing who they are, since I’ve had problems with strangers on IM clients in the past, but I don’t want to decline because it may be someone I want to talk to. So if you’re adding me to your MSN list, send me an e-mail letting me know who you are and where I know you from. Otherwise, I just have an unrecognizable email (and sometimes, an unrecognizable nickname) to go by, and you’re gonna be waiting a couple months before I finally get sick of the windows popping up everytime I log on.
Perhaps this should be a new thread, but I wanted to ask about Trillian. Sorry for the hijack. Which services does Trillian work with? Are you happy with it?
I don’t think it’s just teens - two of the guys that I talked to and deleted yesterday claimed to be in their 60s. It’s sort of sad really, conjures up this picture of an army of guys hopefully sitting in front of their keyboards and webcams in the nude - one hand using their keyboards, the other pulling on their wangs.
To reference another recent thread, I wonder if many of them have fishtanks placed conveniently alongside their computers … with the fish avidly watching through the glass - counting down the seconds until the next feeding time.
I just looked up my details - and my interests are listed as sci-fi, dogs, and Buddhism - nothing there to make people think I’m an avid sex fiend.
You will enjoy http://www.baiting.org/ They have lots of message logs of guys pretending to be girls just to fuck with cyber horn dogs. Hilarity ensues.
