[SOLVED] [tracking] theymos: get rid of ICQ icons!

[LoyceV]

I noticed this when I clicked my uBlock icon:

The connection to icq.com was caused by a user's ICQ icon, showing his online status. ICQ stopped working in 2024, but many users still have this relic from the past in their profile. Without a working service, all this does is give icq.com the ability to track user's IP addresses on Bitcointalk in a way that the image proxy prevents for embedded images.

I've now blocked ICQ from my hosts file:

Code:

127.0.0.1 icq.com
127.0.0.1 status.icq.com
127.0.0.1 www.icq.com

Suggested action: remove the ICQ icon from forum pages.

[theymos]

Done, thanks! Since these are all defunct, I removed all of the icons from posts/PMs. Though I kept them on profiles, since I don't like completely removing extant data.

[examplens]

Done, thanks! Since these are all defunct, I removed all of the icons from posts/PMs. Though I kept them on profiles, since I don't like completely removing extant data.

Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to even rename that section in the profile. It's not only ICQ, but also other long-dead services. AIM, MSN, YIM, Skype, none of this is active, nor will it be. Entry fields to be enabled for regular text will not delete or disturb the current entries, and members will have more customization options.
For example, instead of YIM, why not have a "Bitcoin address" field.

[Cyrus]

Nice find LoyceV and thank you for the quick fixtheymos!
There's this great proposal and discussion here for upgrading the Profile > Social Networks that I think is worth to bring back into attention:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5477924.msg63657735#msg63657735

For example, instead of YIM, why not have a "Bitcoin address" field.

I've wondered this in the past well, don't remember if I bugged theymos with this though  
A Bitcoin address field would be a nice addition to the Bitcoin Forum. Saving a history of edits visible to the staff would help a lot with account recoveries.

[dkbit98]

The connection to icq.com was caused by a user's ICQ icon, showing his online status. ICQ stopped working in 2024, but many users still have this relic from the past in their profile. Without a working service, all this does is give icq.com the ability to track user's IP addresses on Bitcointalk in a way that the image proxy prevents for embedded images.

Nice catch!
It's strange that only ICQ ia affected with this and not AIM, MSN and YIM.
If theymos is going to remove something I would suggest him to remove all of them, not just ICQ, and maybe replace them with blanks fields, if people want to add something new like telegram accounts.

PS
I just checked and there is no ICQ shown in my uBlock origin on forum page.

[Mia Chloe]

~snip

I didn't know we had a suggestion like this in place. It makes a whole lot of sense if users can choose what social media platforms they wish to add to their profile instead of the default ones we had initially. Anyways I'm quite skeptical admin will put this into consideration because of 2 reasons. First is a lot of users are already used to the current one and are already improvising.

Secondly, I'm very sure not up to 35% of the users on the forum have more than 2 spaces filled. Most people just put something funny in the location and age area and then fill up their bitcoin address.

[Vod]

PS
I just checked and there is no ICQ shown in my uBlock origin on forum page.

I just checked and my ICQ is there!   That's because I had populated it with my old id - 8082129.  I keep it on there cause icq had 100M users (9 digits) and my account was only 7 digits.  I am in the top 1% registration of a defunct messaging system!