status.icq.com

[Tom Chick]

I don't know if this is a browser issue, an ISP issue, or something you guys are seeing, too. But when I click on the little icon to read new messages in a thread, a lot of time there's an awkward delay of upwards of ten seconds while the thread loads. Invariably, I get a little message that my browser is "connecting to remote host status.icq.com".

Do you guys see that? Any way to get around it or disable it? I couldn't care less about whether people's ICQ links are active or not.

BTW, I'm using Opera.

-Tom

[Major Malphunktion]

nope, fine here, I'm using M$ explorer, and no ICQ installed on this machine.

[Timemaster Tim]

I see the same thing when I'm using Opera. I don't see it when using IE. I suspect what is happening is that IE figures that it has rendered enough of the page that it can jump to the anchor spot marking the latest unread post. Opera wants to ait until it gets a response from the ICQ site before doing that.

[Bull]

Most likely Opera is doing this because some people have their ICQ numbers associated with their profiles.

[Tom Chick]

Anyone know if there's any way to disable it? I couldn't care less about freakin' ICQ. Ugh.

-Tom

[Bull]

Anyone know if there's any way to disable it?

Switching to IE seems to work. :)

[Tortilla]

I noticed this yesterday, and thought I had gotten infested with some nasty spyware at first. A little experimentation disproved that, and so I started analyzing the raw HTML source from QT3. What I found was interesting. QT3 itself seems to be the source of this status.icq.com thing, via some javascript. I found this fun piece of javascript



if ( navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('mozilla ') != -1 && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('5.') == -1 && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('6.') == -1 )
document.write(' templates/subSilver/images/lang_english/icon_icq_add.gif (http://wwp.icq.com/scripts/search.dll?to=26257436)');
else
document.write&#40;'</td><td>&</td><td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap"><div style="position&#58;relative"><div style="position&#58;absolute">templates/subSilver/images/lang_english/icon_icq_add.gif (http&#58;//wwp.icq.com/scripts/search.dll?to=26257436)</div><div style="position&#58;absolute;left&#58;3px;top&#58;-1px">http&#58;//web.icq.com/whitepages/online?icq=26257436&img=5 (http&#58;//wwp.icq.com/26257436#pager)</div></div>'&#41;;

//--></script><noscript>templates/subSilver/images/lang_english/icon_icq_add.gif (http&#58;//wwp.icq.com/scripts/search.dll?to=26257436)</noscript></td>


So it seems either PHPBB or QT3 specifically is doing some sort of tracking/reporting/linking with icq.com. The snippet I found seemed to be looking specifically for mozilla (my browser) but that may have been the result of browser detection when I first accessed QT3.com

Disabling javascript seems to neatly sidestep the issue. I'm going to try changing my user-agent to see if that dodges the issue also.

QT3 technical admin peoples, is this deliberate and benign? If this is something that generates revenues for QT3 I will be happy to allow it. I'm going to continue sidestepping it until I know what it is though. On the surface it looks harmless, but I'm just paranoid like that.

[Anders Hallin]

Some users have their ICQ number in their profiles, which turns up in the bottom bar of their posts, with info on online or offline.

[Tortilla]

Futher research on my part has shown that this icq thingy is a 'feature' of phpbb. While annoying, it isn't anything to worry about. Icq.com must be having some slowdowns recently because I've never noticed it before yesterday.

I'm very glad my spyware panic was unfounded :D

[graller]

Mozilla ignores it as well.

[XPav]

Firebird ignores it and displays the page, but I do get an hourglass+pointer at it sits there and tries to read so it can display the proper graphic.