LIS 312/TLC 311 (Spring 2001)--Haubitz--Finding Someone!

LIS 312/TLC 311--Information in Cyberspace
Spring 2001

Finding Someone!

See also: http://www.utexas.edu/search/email.html, UT Austin's "Searching for People"

Before starting on this part, login to your unix account.

who

If you've forgotten who you are, type whoami. (You may not forget, usually - but sometimes, if you're logged into multiple accounts or computers, you may get a bit confused :-)
who: shows users currently logged in. From the unix prompt, simply type who and press return.

finger
If you know a person's email address, you can find out his or her basic information. Try it on yourself, and then on one of the users you saw when you used who:
```
	finger userid
```

You can also find out who is using a remote system. Try, for example:

	finger @ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
	finger @io.uah.edu   
	finger @weiss.che.utexas.edu

To find out additional information on users on remote systems, do a finger specifying their whole address. So, for example, if there was a user mbono using ccwf.cc.utexas.edu, you would know that his address is mbono@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu. Pick this user, and try a finger, like this:
```
	finger mbono@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
```
If you don't know the person's email, you can finger for his or her names. For example, you know that Arturo Rivera is a computer science student at Carnegie Mellon. You guess that his machine will be "cs.cmu.edu" - and you try:
```
	finger rivera@cs.cmu.edu
```
Often you can guess the person's host in a similar way. If you can't, try one of the lists of hostnames on the web, for example, The University Pages, search a whois database via telnet (see below) or another service listed below.
Try these sites for fun cola@kantine.diku.dk, coke@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au and nasanews@space.mit.edu ! Enjoy!
NEW: Try this! Using PICO, create a .plan file in your home directory. The information you include in this file will be displayed in addition to the default finger information.

whois

whois databases lists addresses for individuals and systems. The largest whois database is at the InterNIC Registration Services Host. Telnet to InterNiC:
```
	telnet rs.internic.net
```
Then, try to find Harley Hahns's email address by entering:
```
	whois Hahn
```
What happens if you entered his first name too?
```
	whois Hahn, Harley
```
You can also check out information about domains here, for example:
```
	whois utexas-dom
	whois tw-dom  (information about the Taiwan domain)
```
To list all hosts in a given state, type in:
```
	ho texas
```
Note that InterNIC lists many people who are involved with Internet business and research. But many universities and other organizations also have their own whois databases. A list of whois servers is here: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/whois/whois-servers.list. This file also contains instructions on accessing other whois servers.

X.500
Visit the UT's Electronic Directory.
Try finding yourself in the X.500 directory.

Austin Yellow Pages

Go to the Austin Yellow Pages. Find out what kind of information this service can provide you, and do a few test searches.

WhoWhere
Point your browser to WhoWhere the only free online directory that lets you search for people and Companies on the Internet. The service claims to have 16 million email listings and 600,000 personal home pages. Try to find information about a relative or friend. If you don't find anything continue with the next service.

InfoSpace
InfoSpace is a relatively complete and comprehensive people and business finder. It includes national and selected international listings. Try to find MCI's Residential Long Distance toll free number.

Four-11
One of the best resources available today on the Web: the Yahoo! People Search site. Try finding yourself, then search for a friend or two. Finally, please look at the FAQ pages, and try to get a feeling for the number of listings this directory contains, and where they come from.

If you still can't find an email address for a friend, but you know which system they are using, try sending a short message to the postmaster:
```
	postmaster@system
```
He or she will probably try to reply within a few days. Please be patient, and use this only as a last resort!

Heiko Haubitz
Last updated on February 6, 2001