ICQ and SSL

That's interesting, is it my one after the recent move ICQ stopped working with SSL? Now, in order for Pidgin to connect, it is necessary to put a tick Don't use encryption. At first I thought that this would pass with time, but only time had passed, and not this problem.

What is it for? It seems that ICQ was bought by Digital Sky with all the giblets, so, for sure, competent individuals have full access to the users' correspondence. Why, then, is this the way to expose users to non-competent individuals? Mysteriously ... Or, simply, do they have enough computing power for centralized analysis of correspondence?