Chebucto Community Net:
IP FAQs: Using Finger to Find Information About a User
There are times when one would like to find out some information about
a particular EMail address. Who is the person who this EMail account
represents and what do they do?
To answer some of these questions there is an Internet facility called
Finger. The CCN has a script which serves as a gateway to this
Internet utility. You can access it via:
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/cgi-bin/finger
Doing so gives you the following dialog box:
Finger Gateway
Finger Gateway
This is a gateway to "finger". Type a user@host combination in your
browser's search dialog.
This is a searchable index. Use / to search.
When you type the / character you see:
Enter a database query:
You then enter an EMail address.
The information that Finger provides is dependant on what information is
registered about that user at their domain. This can range from very
meagre to quite ample. The only way to determine if it is useful is to
try it.
You can also enter a hostname to view all users currently logged into a
site (if the site offers that info) by just specifying "@hostname".
If you are using finger to try to find someone's e-mail address,
you might not always succeed. For further help on finding e-mail addresses
on the Internet try the Internet Address
Finder. Or if it is a CCN e-mail address, type go people.
For further questions on the use of this resource, EMail ip-help@chebucto.ns.ca
Christopher Majka