AOL Blocking ICQ Users Out, Scammers Monetizing the Trend

I have already described the strange situation users of AOL’s ICQ instant messaging protocol got into here in Russia with AOL trying to make people use only the products that generate profits for AOL with people trying to use products that are actually usable. In Russia and in many other countries of the former Soviet Union ICQ is traditionally the most popular IM protocol with the vast majority of connected population using ICQ as their oldest communications tool where all the contacts are.

But at the same time AOL (the ICQ protocol owner) does not look to be willing to invest in developing usable desktop clients for people to actually want to engage in IM conversations using official ICQ clients. To tell you the truth, AOL only offers clients that are so horrible that the only thing they can do is irritate anyone who ever attempts to use them.

So it is no wonder that Russia, the largest market for ICQ, is also the country where people rely heavily on various alternative IM clients, most frequently those that allow us to use a number of protocols in one tool. The most popular clients here are Russian QIP and open-source Miranda. And of course AOL is more than unhappy with this situation as every user of such an alternative client only uses ICQ as a protocol (and adds load to AOL’s servers) but never watches or clicks ads AOL serves people in official clients trying to monetize the protocol in this manner.

So AOL is trying to make people switch to official clients in every way the company can - usually by making changes in the ICQ protocol that make it impossible to use in alternative clients and also notifying users that they need to use an official client to talk to their contacts in the future before disabling all the third-party clients. But the vast majority of those Russian users who rely on alternative clients to exchange messages via ICQ are too stubborn to simply switch to official clients as they are told to - hence the developers of alternative clients quickly offer solutions and update their software to meet the requirements of the updated ICQ protocol.

But AOL seems to be pretty determined to attack such alternative clients everywhere it can - and updates the ICQ protocol pretty frequently. For example, the recent two updates of the protocol were only separated by two weeks - yet every time users quickly found a way to stick to the alternative clients within a day or so.

But the worst part is that we now actually have scammers using the situation to earn money off inexperienced and naïve users of such alternative clients. After the last update of the ICQ protocol, many users of alternative clients received instant message that read:

Dear User!

Due to the protocol update you now need to confirm your UIN by SMS activation. If you fail to do so, your account will be blocked within 48 hours. To activate your UIN send a message «WAP ICQ2009» to ……… if you are in Russia or to ………  if you are in Ukraine. The message is free for you.

Sincerely,

AOL support (ICQ inc)

I have not found any mentions of people actually sending the messages requested to the phone numbers stated and paying to the scammers some amount but I suspect there must be users here naïve enough to do so - and the clever scammers must be pretty happy with their invention already.

But it is just logical: scammers know how to track the hottest trends and how to use them in some new and clever way. Now we see scammers monetizing AOL’s fight against alternative clients here in Russia but I really don’t understand what prevents AOL from doing something very similar to monetize their ICQ protocol even when it is used by the people who never see AOL’s ads in their IM clients.

It could work pretty simple: I am an ICQ user and I use Miranda to exchange messages with my ICQ contacts. At the same time I feel guilty as I do realize that I create extra expenses to AOL by using their servers to exchange such messages but I am sensible enough not to want to use those ugly clients AOL offers to us so I would be totally willing to compensate these extra expenses to AOL if only they let me do so. How? Same as these scammers do: let me send you a paid SMS or use any other payment method that is available here for me to be able to use my ICQ account for a year in any client that I want.

This will be totally fair: AOL will still get their money and I won’t have to use the solutions I am totally unwilling to use. What’s more, I have a feeling that AOL will get more money this way than updating ICQ protocol every couple of weeks in hopes that people will migrate to official clients as I know for sure that developers will find new ways to exchange ICQ messages in alternative clients much faster than AOL developers will come up with the next update of the protocol.

So what’s the point in avoiding all the opportunities to monetize users who could be willing to pay for your services and letting various scammers earn their illegal revenues off your products instead? Honestly, I think AOL is losing some pretty good revenue here and acts like a stubborn child who only knows one way to play a certain game and does not want to notice all the other wonderful ways to play it that could be even better in the end.