"A man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine."
-- George Bernard Shaw
I have four account addresses. What does that make me? (1)
My main address is PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU (stop laughing ... it's NOT funny). I also have a UNIX account address (PCRISPE1@UA1IX.UA.EDU), a P-MAIL address (PCRISPE1@SSS.CBA.UA.EDU), and I even have an address on America Online (CRISPEN@AOL.COM).
The only address that I use regularly is PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU
When I was writing the lesson plans for last week's Gopher lessons, I logged on to my UNIX account (PCRISPE1@UA1IX.UA.EDU) just to brush up on some commands. I had not used my UNIX account in over two years (I personally do not like UNIX, and I try to avoid using it as much as is humanly possible) (2)
Sitting in my UNIX account's mailbox were three letters. Each letter was written by someone who said they found my address using an e-mail address search. One of the letters was SIX MONTHS old.
As you can see from the above story, e-mail address searches may not be 100% accurate. You may get a working e-mail address, but there is no guarantee that the address that you get will be on a system that the person that you want to talk to still uses.
The moral of my story is this: while it would be great if you could just type a few commands on your screen and get the e-mail address of anyone in the world, the BEST way to find someone's e-mail address is to call them on the telephone and ASK them for it.
However, it would be cruel for me to tell you that it is possible for you to do an e-mail address search (however flawed such a search might be) and then not show you how to do one of these searches :)
There are several different e-mail address search tools. I am going to show you one of them -- whois.
The "whois" directory is one of the most popular e-mail search tools. 'The whois directory provides names, e-mail and postal mail addresses and often phone numbers for people listed in it. To use it, telnet to
internic.netNo log-on is needed (you can also use whois through Gopher -- check out the University of Minnesota's gopher server in the "phone books" menu).
Once you have accessed the telnet site, the quickest way to conduct a whois address search is to type
whois <name>at the prompt, replacing <name> with the last name or organization name that you are looking for.' (3)
Let's check-up on the President of the United States! I type
whois Clintonand the following appears on my screen:
Whois: whois Clinton
Clinton Cadillac (NET-C106755) C106755 198.249.102.0
Clinton Central School (AGCC-DOM) AGCC.COM
Clinton Group, Inc. (CLINTON-DOM) CLINTON.COM
Clinton High School (NET-CLINTONHS-NET) CLINTONHS-NET 192.239.138.0
Clinton, Tom J. (TJC2) tjclinton@PIPTRONIX.COM 416 289 1895
Bummer ... No "Bill."
However, I did get some neat information. Let's take a closer look at two of these entries:
Clinton Group, Inc. (CLINTON-DOM) CLINTON.COM
Clinton, Tom J. (TJC2) tjclinton@PIPTRONIX.COM 416 289 1895
The first entry is an entry for a site. "Clinton Group, Inc." is the real-life name of this particular site. The "CLINTON-DOM" part is just a "handle" that the whois database uses to identify this entry. The last part is the site's Internet address (in other words, the e-mail address for someone who works for the Clinton Group would be USER@CLINTON.COM (where USER is replaced with the person's login id)).
The second entry is for a person named Tom J. Clinton. Again, the entry has a handle (TJC2). This entry also has two new items: Tom's e-mail address, and his telephone number (btw, this is just an example -- the e-mail address and telephone number listed above will not work).
Let's keep looking for the President. I can use an e-mail address as a search keyword, so I type
Whois president@whitehouse.govand the following appears on my screen:
Whois president@whitehouse.gov
No match for mailbox "PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV"
Gee ... that's odd. I know that president@whitehouse.gov is the correct e-mail address. What happened?
To add to the problem of "inaccurate" addresses that we discussed a few minutes ago, most e-mail address databases are far from complete. Heck, this whois directory does not even have an entry for ME!
Again, if you want to find someone's e-mail address, the best way to get it is to ASK that person for their address!!
FINGER
"Finger is a handy little program which lets you find out more about people on the Net -- and lets you tell others on the Net more about yourself.
Finger uses the same concept as telnet or FTP, but it works with only one file, called .plan (yes, with a period in front). This is a text file an Internet user creates with a text editor in his home directory. (If you local Internet service provider allows it), you can put your phone number in there, tell a little bit about yourself, or write almost anything at all." (3)
If you local Internet service provider allows you to use finger -- and a lot don't, for reasons we will soon see -- all you need to do to read someone else's plan is type
finger <user@address>replacing <user@address> with the e-mail address of the person that you want to finger.
For example, if I type
finger pcrispe1@ua1ix.ua.edu(my UNIX account address), the following appears on my screen:
ua1ix.ua.edu
Login name: pcrispe1@ua1ix.ua.edu In real life: Patrick Crispen
Directory: /u/as/econ/pcrispe1 Shell: /bin/sh
On since Nov 09 06:27:38 on ttyp0 at ua1ix from ua1vm.ua.edu ...
No plan.
Boring!
Let's finger someone else. I type
finger coke@cs.cmu.eduand the following appears on my screen:
L.GP.CMU.EDU
Login: coke Name: Drink Coke
Directory: /usr/coke Shell: /usr/local/bin/tcsh
Last login Wed Oct 12 14:27 (EDT) on ttyp1 from PTERO.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU
Mail came on Tue Nov 8 13:35, last read on Tue Nov 8 13:35
Plan:
Thu Sep 29 17:33:39 1994
M&M validity: 0 Coke validity: 0 (e.g. data interface is down)
Exact change required for coke machine.
M & M Buttons
/-----\
| | C: CCCCCCCCCCCC...........
|** | C: CCCCCC...... D: CCCCCC......
|*****| C: CCCCCC...... D: CCCCCC......
|*****| C: CCCCCC...... D: CCCCCC......
\-----/ C: CCCCCC......
| S: CCCCCC......
| Key:
| 0 = warm; 9 = 90% cold; C = cold; . = empty
| Leftmost soda/pop will be dispensed next
---^---
Huh?? The story, as best as I can remember it, is that the people who worked at the Computer Science department at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh were sick and tired of having to go down several flights of stairs only to discover that their Coke machine was empty. So, they hooked the Coke machine up to the Internet.
Using a finger command, they could tell how many Cokes were in the machine, and they could even tell if the Cokes were cold or not (the M&M machine came later).
The neat thing about this is that ANYONE with access to finger can finger the CMU Coke machine and discover how many Cokes there are in this one vending machine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania :)
While this is funny -- and there are a lot of other neat things that you can find using finger -- there is a problem. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education
Many college and university computer system administrators are
responding to rising concerns over misuse of the Finger tool with
modifications that restrict the information users can glean, and
some have eliminated it altogether. Critics note the tool violates
privacy -- it provides information about where people are logging
on and when they're doing it -- and security -- crackers can use
it to obtain information that can help them break into computer
accounts ... (4)
Don't be shocked if you try to finger someone and it does not work. If you site does not have a finger program, you can still finger someone by sending an e-mail letter to
jfesler@netcom.comwith the command
#finger <user@address>in the SUBJECT LINE of your letter (NOTE: do NOT put the command in the body of your letter), replacing <user@address> with the e-mail address of the person that you want to finger.
You should receive a response about a day later.
You can also try to finger someone using telnet (but I have yet to get this to work from here). If the person's address is user@site, telnet to
<site> 79replacing <site> with the site's address. Once connected, type the username.
HOMEWORK:
PATRICK DOUGLAS CRISPEN THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS LETTER DO NOT
PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA - TUSCALOOSA
ROADMAP: COPYRIGHT PATRICK CRISPEN 1994. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
(\__/) .~ ~. ))
/O O `./ .' PATRICK DOUGLAS CRISPEN
{O__, \ { PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU
/ . . ) \ THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA
|-| '-' \ } ))
.( _( )_.'
'---.~_ _ _& Warning: squirrels.