The instant messaging program ICQ – launched in 1996 – grew quickly into a social medium with tens of millions of users around the world. ICQ,?the programs that account for 90 percent of all instant-message users. Including criminals. Identity did not matter at that time. Back then you were just a number. In a notorious Dutch pornography case in Zandvoort the slain suspect Gerry U used ICQ to distribute child pornography. ICQ still exists – as?it is still quite popular in Russia – and the criminal possibilities exist too. For example, in 2011, the ads shown in ICQ were used to infect computers advertising?new fake-virus scanning software. The Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Lab has received numerous reports of computers that were infected by the so-called Antivirus 8. Through this scareware users saw fake pop-ups, even if the computer was in idle mode. Further investigation revealed that the pop-ups were shown via ICQ. As technology progressed, so did?their modus operandi. The criminals had managed to keep up appearances and make it look like their server was hacked, so they could always claim to know nothing about the case in question.
Joe Trudeau had reason to be glad he had installed the?ICQ?(I seek you) program, which notifies friends that he has logged on to the Internet and is available to chat.?After his computer was stolen, police followed Trudeau’s?ICQ?trail. A 17-year- old in Hull, Que., and his 45-year-old mother have been charged with possession of stolen property worth about $4,000. ”The Internet is an open field. You walk in and it looks like a jungle, but you actually leave footprints everywhere you go,” said Matunda Nyanchama, a computer security expert with Ernst and Young in Toronto.
Sources: Security.nl?(nep virusscanner ICQ), NRC Handelsblad?(zaak Zandvoort),?”On Internet, David-and-Goliath Battle Over Instant Messages” (The New York Times, June 24, 2000),?Catching crooks through the net (The Toronto Star, April 6, 1999).