Icq

Overall I like the program. I get to chat with a lot of people. But, in OS 9, when I have Photoshop open, it crashes my G4 REALLY BAD. really weird crash. In OS X, it does not cause any problems, it is just kinda slow.
 
When you hear about a program being unsecure like that, 99% of the time they mean the Windows version. ICQ for Mac should be fine.
 
It's basically as unsecure as these message boards. If you're looking for security, I would suggest registering with ICQ and then using a different program to connect with it. Or, don't send those plans for the nuclear power plant and the detailed directions as to where you hid the body on ICQ. Or live on the edge and send them anyway. If you do want the encryption, these are the programs with some kind of encryption (as far as I know):

Fire from http://www.epicware.com - If you have GnuPGP set up (for e-mail perhaps), then you can send encrypted messages to other people using GnuPGP.

Most Jabber clients from http://www.jabber.org - This will encrypt from you to the server that you're connected to. Unless the other person is also using Jabber's secure connection, then it's all unencrypted from there. So if you're using ICQ, it'll only be secure partway.

Trillian (for the PC) from http://www.trillian.cc - you can send secure messages over ICQ and other chat protocols to other Trillian users. All two of them.

Anyway, for the most part chat programs like ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, or Jabber are "unsecure", in the sense that messages are sent in plain text and anyone could intercept the messages and read them. I just don't say anything incriminating, and everything's cool.
 
Fire is a good prog too. Do any 1 know if theres a way to always keep the im windows tranparent cause i have it set to become transparent to get my attention like if im using ow.
 
You could just use WindowShade X to keep them transparent. :) That's probably the easiest solution.
 
A friend of mine works for a software company in Seattle -- they make firewall boxes for corporate use. No, I don't really understand what he is doing. :)

Anyway, he mentioned a few years back that ICQ in Windows completely violates any firewall or proxy settings. :eek: I'm not sure if this is still the case.
 
Originally posted by themacko
When you hear about a program being unsecure like that, 99% of the time they mean the Windows version. ICQ for Mac should be fine.
Click to expand...

haha :D:D
 
ICQ used to be really frustrating for firewalls. It didn't have any set port that it used, and opened up a random new one on a different port for each person you talked to. This meant that you have to open up close to a thousand ports in your firewall, or at least did. You could force it to play nice, but it usually involves sending all your messages through ICQ's server, which is kind of dumb when you consider that ICQ is (or was) based in Israel, so that's a long trip. Actually, the Mac version was fine with firewalls for the very fact that it only sent through ICQ's servers.

Another stupid thing about ICQ was that it used to not check the address of an incoming message, to see if it came from the person you're talking with. For example, you could receive a message from your rich Uncle Bob saying that he's dying and you are his sole heir. So ICQ opens up a special port for receiving messages from Uncle Bob. People made programs that would find the ICQ ports that were open, and they could send messages to that port, so that ICQ would think Uncle Bob was sending you a message to go stick your head in a blender. Then you tell Uncle Bob to go screw himself, and Uncle Bob immediately takes you out of his will.

Anyhoo, I think a lot of this has been fixed in the past year or two with ICQ's version 7 protocol, fortunately.
 
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