A nostalgic ICQ-compatible messenger

Get your UIN and password in the Ask'a app first. Then point one of these clients at our server:

• ICQ 98a, 99a, 99b — host aska.chat, UDP port 4000.
• ICQ 2000b — set Default Server Host to aska.chat in the registry.
• ICQ 2001, 2002, 2003b, 4 Lite, 5.1 — server field aska.chat, port 5190.

Any other client with a server field may try aska.chat:5190; this is not a compatibility guarantee.

The OSCAR server is open-oscar-server, released under the MIT license. It is not AOL's server.

Ask'a looks like the mobile ICQ of the early 2000s: a red glossy header, Tahoma, daisy status icons and softkeys along the bottom. Messages are plain lines under “nick (time)” — no bubbles.

Ask'a100-042

• lena
• max_99
• olga

lena (21:04)is that Tahoma?

dima (21:05)and the red header :)

lena (21:05)feels like 2003

MenuSend

4.99 USDfor 30 days

This fee is charged to develop and maintain the project.

You pay once by card and get 30 days. It does not renew automatically: when the period ends, you decide whether to pay again.

When you pay 4.99 USD yourself, you get exactly 5 gifts.

• One gift is 30 days for an existing user, or an invite for a new user.
• Unused gifts expire at the end of that paid period.
• A gifted month does not give the recipient their own 5 gifts. Only a self-paid 4.99 USD does.

Your UIN is assigned from a counter and shown in groups of three: 100000 is written as 100-000.

After 365 days without a login and after your paid period has ended, the UIN is closed and may be assigned to a new registrant.

No phone number. You set a secret question. An email address is required so the account can be recovered.

Ask'a is for adults only, 18+, because it has people search.

Messages are encrypted on your device with X25519 and AES-256-GCM. When both sides use Ask'a, the server stores only ciphertext.

When either party uses a legacy ICQ client, the server stores the message as plaintext.

The lock icon appears only after your device has successfully decrypted the message.

• No chat rooms.
• No ads.
• No stories.

Ask'a is an independent project. It is not ICQ, not AOL and not Mail.ru, and is not affiliated with any of them. ICQ is named here only to describe which old clients can connect.