A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.
Ben Franklin
All those Web sites! All the mailing lists! All the great information out there for you to read and retrieve! It's really something, isn't it? Of course, it would be kind of nice if the Web site or the e-mail happened to be written by someone you actually know. Now that would be something, wouldn't it?
Well, there sure isn't any reason on earth that a Web site shouldn't be written by someone you know. And the odds of an old friend having an e-mail account are not terribly slim. The Web, believe it or not, was built by individuals, not businesses. For the first few years of its existence a commercial site was the exception rather than the rule. Businesses and colleges have been using e-mail for many years to communicate, so there's a very good chance that someone you know has an e-mail account. And these days, more and more people have personal accounts, so it's even possible that some of your old friends have more than one e-mail address. I figure my own sister has had four or five e-mail accounts in the past three years and that makes her a relative newbie at this whole Internet thing. So, just how would you go about finding those old friends if they do indeed have a listing somewhere?
Given the subject of this book, I'm obviously going to tell you how you might do it electronically, but the absolute best way if you know where they are is to call or write them and ask. No kidding. These machines we call computers are here to save time, not make work for us. Searching for someone electronically can be time-consuming. It isn't always, but it can be. So if you know where that friend is and how to contact him or her, do it. A call or letter from an old friend is always welcome. Make those your first contact. Then renew the friendship electronically.
Let's make our first stop at Lycos (http://www.lycos.com), where they contract with a purveyor of information called Pro CD.
Now how about that? Front and center on the very first Web page is People Find. If your friend's name is in a phone book somewhere in the U.S. or Canada, it's a good bet you'll find him or her here. These listings are updated quarterly (phone books just keep changing as, we all know). What are you waiting for? Point and click on that People Find icon!
The figures in this article are current at the time of publication, but Webmasters are a fickle lot and make regular changes to their sites. The screens you see when you browse the same sites may look different but the same information described here will likely be on those screens—perhaps in a different format.
Nothing very tricky about this one. Go ahead, enter the last name of your friend and then the first. If you know what city and state he or she is living in, go ahead and enter that too. For my own purposes, I shall go in search of myself. I've been meaning to find me for years and years. Might as well do it now, I suppose.
Brigman. Linda. I'm going to skip the City and State information. Hmmmmm, that's odd. It would appear that I'm still lost to myself. Could have sworn I had at least one phone number.
Ms. Manners Says. . .
There is a very good reason why I do not show you examples of the results screens here. In spite of the fact that the information that results from a search is public and you can easily find it on the search engines on the Web, it is considered very bad form to publish someone's phone or e-mail address to others. I won't publish them in this article, and you shouldn't publish them to others, whether that is through e-mail or news group postings. It is perfectly acceptable, however, for me to publish my own since that is my choice.
There are apparently four of me and we're all southerners. That's a comfort, at least. According to the list I get, I'm living in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. Well, I do live in North Carolina, but I don't live in Ellerbe—at least as far as I know. Obviously, I have a split personality. I need help, and I'm in luck! See, right there, at the bottom of the listings? FAQ and Help!
A quick click on help and—ah ha! I may need to broaden the scope of my search somewhat. I'm thinking that may be a good thing and a bad—what if there are more of me? Can I deal with that? Might as well get this over with. Broaden.
Back (quite literally, with the Back icon on the browser) to the listings and think about this. I'm sorry, but Brigman is definitely my last name and I don't want to know about the Brightons and the Briggers and the Brighmans. I don't mind too much finding the Lynns, Lynnes, Lyndas, Leslies—they're definitely not me. Clicking that Back icon again, I can re-enter the information for the search.
Clicking on New Search takes you back to the Lycos home page. Save yourself a step and just back up once instead. If, however, you've run a search that gives you several results screens, use the New Search link to get you back to the Lycos home page, and then click on People Find again rather than using the Back button repeatedly.
So if I enter brigman as last name and l* (the * is a wildcard) as a first initial, I get 57 responses and what do you know? One of them is the me I know about! If I click on the address listing, I can view my location on a map, find out what businesses are in my area, learn more about my town, and even get directions to my place—well, I don't suppose I really need that. And I'm not sure you should really just drop in on that old friend of yours either. Call first. You've got the number now.
You still don't have the phone number? Came up empty on that one? There are a number of possibilities here. If that old friend of yours has an unlisted number, you're not going to find him or her here. Is there an off chance that you don't remember exactly how the last name is spelled? Use wildcards if you're not completely sure— your friend's last name spelled Symington or Symmington? Try Sym*.
Narrow down the location as much as you can, especially if the last name is much more common, such as Smith or Jones or White. Try variations on the theme, depending on the name. If you're sure your friend's name is John Smith, enter that information and try it one state at a time. Lycos will only give you the first 100 matches you request and there are more than 100 John Smiths in Michigan alone. If you're pretty sure your friend is back in Michigan, narrow the search by city. There are a heck of a lot of John Smith's in the U.S..
Still no luck? Let's pop back up to People Find and see if your elusive friend has an e-mail address instead. Sometimes people don't think about un-listing those.
See? There, just above the place where you've been entering the last name? Yes, one line up. The link for e-mail addresses. Click on it. The screen that appears should look a lot like the search for phone numbers screen.
Once again, I'll go in search of myself. Because brigman l* (without city and state fields) worked for me for my phone number, I'll use the same fields in this example. Click on the Go Get It icon. Yes, there are three L. Brigmans with e-mail addresses and 2 of them are me. You'll use the same methods for broadening (by using wildcards) or tightening (by narrowing down to exact spellings of the name and entering city and state information) your searches as you did for the address search.
If your search turns up more than one candidate that might indeed be that old friend, how would you know which one is correct? In truth, it may be very hard to tell. For example, I know that the two listings for me are, indeed, both addresses that I have used. One of them, however, is an account that I frankly had forgotten that I had. I haven't checked mail on that particular system in oh, say, four or five years. Anyone who sent mail to me there would be highly unlikely to hear from me, even if she was an old friend I would dearly love to be in touch with again. One of those listings, under the Detail column, says United States—a pretty broad detail, that—and the other North Carolina, United States.
In fact, both of those accounts are in North Carolina; one is my business address and one was a personal account that I used for a while. You might choose to send e-mail to both addresses (or however many you find that might actually be that old friend you're looking for) with a brief note that gives some specific information about your old friend that will sufficiently identify you to him or her. By clicking on the address and sending a note that says something along the lines of "Hi, I'm looking for the Linda Brigman who went to college at Lenoir Rhyne. We were classmates and I'd love to be in touch if you are that same Linda Brigman. Thanks for your response. My apologies for the interruption if you are not she."
When e-mailing someone you think is the person you are looking for, but are not sure, keep in mind that you don't want to give out too much information about yourself to complete strangers. Simply identify yourself as closely as you are willing and see what develops. You might actually make a new friend in the process.
If you're completely unsure about taking a chance on the addresses you find or if you don't find any addresses, you don't have to give up. There are other Web sites that can be useful.
For other options, let's pop over to Four11 (http://www.four11.com) and try their people finder.
Notice that the default search is for e-mail addresses—you may or may not want to do that search first. Let's assume that you're still not quite sure where your friend is located and really would rather look for a phone number. Click on the Telephone link, Inn the left pane of the screen, under Directories. This displays the screen.
I know, I know, this looks like the screens you saw when using Lycos. Humor me. You know the drill by now. Notice here, however, that First Name is first. I'm still in search of the real me, so this time I'm l* brigman. Click on the Search icon.
Now it would seem that Lycos' and Four11's Searches are somewhat different since the search results for me on this one turn up three more L. Brigmans, which is sort of a problem for me, since I seem to be confusing myself rather than solving the search for me. If you're trying to find someone and haven't been able to, finding more possibilities is a good thing.
You'll notice if you click on any of the names listed that you get the name, address, and phone number of that person. You also get a link to search for e-mail addresses and that's not just an idle search. It searches specifically for that person. I see that I have a telephone listing, and a search for my e-mail address turns up quite a bit of information about me. What's more, all of it is current. So now I've got three e-mail addresses for me. It would appear that I'm connected electronically.
Have you had any luck yet? No? Are you sure you have the name right? Could the person you are looking for possibly be Glenn Fudhopper instead of Graham? No? Okay, if you're sure.
Let's try for e-mail. The person you are looking for may be unlisted by the phone company, and in that case, you're not going to find him listed here either. Unlisted is unlisted any way you look at it.
On the left, again, under Directories, click the E-Mail link. You're sure it's Graham Fudhopper you are searching for (I assume you hear me mumbling under my breath about memories, right?)? Ah yes, here we go.
Yep, same, same. Name, rank, serial—I mean First Name, Last Name, whoa! Domain? Excuse me? Domain? Don't panic—it's optional! But think about it, if the last time you saw old Graham, he was working for IBM, that could help you find him. He might still be there. Couldn't hurt to try ibm.com, now could it? Or maybe he was teaching at Yale—yale.edu.
<Your> Domain <Name Here>
Domain names are registered names that correspond to specific businesses, colleges, non-profit organizations, and other entities. They're registered with an organization by the name of InterNIC (a tidbit you can use in conversation to amaze the less Web savvy of your friends). They're usually pretty easy to guess.
The ibm.com is an easy one—who doesn't know IBM? The .com simply indicates that IBM is a for profit corporation. The .edu indicates an educational institution; .org is a non-profit association or business; .net is generally a network service provider such as earthlink.net; .gov (tough one, eh?) a government agency. Those are the most common types of domains.
My company, Research Triangle Institute, is more commonly referred to as RTI—thank goodness! I'd hate for my Web site to be www.researchtriangleinstitute.org! WWW.rti.org is a heck of a lot easier to type.
The domain name is the last two parts of a Web site address: ibm.com; rti.org; yale.edu. The third part of most Web sites' addresses—the www—is the designation for a specific machine on that company's network. Only the very last two parts are the actual domain name.
Okay, you go on searching for Graham. I'll continue my search for myself. I really need to get a handle on how many of me there are. If I locate enough Linda Brigmans, I'll never do housecleaning again! One of us is bound to be neat and she can do it!
I appear to be completely out of luck here. This is not good. I existed at Lycos. I seem to have disappeared here. Except for that phone listing I found earlier. That listing also listed my e-mail address but this one does not. Interesting.
If you still haven't found your friend, Four11 has a very nice service that they offer registered visitors. It's your call as to whether you want to use it, but it can be very helpful if you're looking for someone – or perhaps they're looking for you (some people may not find that latter option desirable and might just as soon stay lost).
On Four11's home page, toward the top is an offer to Get A Free Listing with them. On that page and on other pages, if you do happen to be browsing, on the left side of the screen is a section captioned My Listing and under it Add Me and Login. If you click on either the Free Listing at the top or the Add Me on the side.
When you enter your e-mail address and click on Register.
Yes, it looks almost exactly like the previous screen and that's why I include it here. It's a little bit confusing, but if you notice, after the list of reasons you should register, there's a line that says "This is not a search form. This will be your free listing at Four11."
If you scroll down the page, you'll see the various information you need to complete in order to get a free listing. Most of it is completely self-explanatory: your name, location, and Internet address. The Primary address should be the e-mail address that you use most often. There also is room to enter two more e-mail addresses, if you like. If the address you entered as your Primary address is the only one you have, don't put anything in the Additional Addresses area. If you have several e-mail addresses, you can add at least two more of them here. In my case, for example, I entered my personal address (the account that I use for primarily for non-work-related correspondence) as a Primary and my business address as Additional.
Following your additional e-mail addresses is place to list Old E-Mail Addresses. Boy, I'm in luck on this one. Hopefully, anyone who happens to be searching for me will see this and know that I don't check that address that I found at Lycos—the one I haven't accessed in years.
Next there's a spot to enter your personal home page if you have one. Note that if your personal home page is at Four11, you don't need to list it here.
The next sections are a bit different and deserve some explanation. Beginning with Group Connections.
Current Organization is a bit nebulous as an identifier. I entered my company, Research Triangle Institute, but you might be a student or a homemaker, in which case you would be more likely to enter the name of the school or the word Homemaker to indicate one of those associations.
To the right of Current Organization, and in the entries that follow, is a box that is checked and is marked with an asterisk. I was busy filling in the info and didn't take the time to find out what that meant until I got to the end of the page. What that indicates, since it is checked by default, is that it's acceptable to you for Four11 to show that information if someone does a search that includes your listing in its results. If you don't want the information listed, click on the box with the check to remove it and it won't be shown.
Past Connections—these are kind of fun. If you're searching for an old friend from high school and/or college, you won't want to change these choices. If your search involves some other area—specific interests, for example—click on the down arrow next to Past High School and you'll see areas you may enter instead of your high school that will make it easier for friends to find you.
After you register, you can customize your listing and enter specific areas of interest, such as the name of your high school or college, the hobby that you are associated with, the military unit you were a member of and so on, that will remind old friends of you in the most specific ways.
You can choose from a number of areas including, interests, research areas, and military service. Consider what you would expect that old friend of yours to search if he or she were looking for you. I suspect that my old friends would immediately think of books because I have always been a voracious reader. Or they might look for High School. The same list is featured in the next selection, so you have two areas that you can use to help others narrow their search for you.
I know, I know! The idea is for you to find Graham, bless his heart. We're getting there. Trust me.
You next are asked to enter your password twice. I'm sure you've heard it before but don't use a password that you use on another site and do use one that you will remember. And no, do not ask me how you do that. I'm darned if I know. In fact, I once sent e-mail to HotWired (http://www.hotwired.com) wherein I admitted that I did register at one time and I knew I had a password but couldn't remember it. They kindly sent me a new password and I lost it. I am not kidding—I just plain lost the mail message. I haven't had the nerve to ask them for it again; it's just too embarrassing. I somehow doubt they keep a list of people who lose their passwords but I still have this horrible feeling that someone will see my second request and put my name on their list of completely stupid users. It's a personal problem. Thanks for letting me share.
Anyway! Now you submit your form. When you do, you'll see a screen with some general information. It covers the time that may be required to find your listing and information about your password. Now, go right ahead and click on Click Here.
When you do, you get what at first looks to be the same screen you've seen before so that you can search the e-mail directory—first name, last name, domain, and so on. But if you look again, you'll notice that now you can do an Advanced E-mail Search from this screen.
Now you have a broader range of areas in which to search. You can enter information about the organization if you know which company Graham's working with. There's also an opportunity to enter past locations (that might be useful); there are those connections (schools, colleges, hobbies), and searches on Web pages and sleeper search. "Sleeper search?" you ask?
Yes, sleeper search. You can request that Four11 notify you if your friend registers a listing, which is a good deal. You don't even have to remember to check back. The good folks at Four11 will check for you and send you e-mail if your friend or associate registers.
Notice that where before you had Add Me and Login under My Listing, you now have View and Change. You can check what you have listed for yourself with View and change it with Change.
You go searching again for Graham; I'll see if I come up with a more seriously split personality. I'll refine my search for myself by specifying a past connection of College and entering Lenoir Rhyne in the key words area.
Now that's more like it! Four11 returns exactly one match and it is definitely me.
I hope you get the idea now. The searches at most of the places on the Web are similar to the ones at Lycos and Four11. At WhoWhere (http://www.whowhere.com) you can also register your own information and enter your own personal profile, essentially providing you with your own Web page if you like. At 555-1212 (http://www.555-1212.com) you can search the directories at Switchboard (http://www.switchboard.com), Four11, Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com), and InfoSpace (http://www.infospace.com). 555-1212 is not so graphics intensive as some of the other sites, which makes it a bit faster, too.
Now, If you still haven't located your friend at any of those places, you can hop over to John December's Internet—Searching People page (http://www.december.com/cmc/info/internet-searching-people.html) and find even more Web sites to search.
Should you try all those resources and still not get lucky, you might want to check out the Usenet FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses at http://www.math.uio.no/faq/finding-addresses.html. There you'll find some 16 pages of information, some of it pretty arcane, but all of it very helpful if you are really serious about your search. The information in the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) assumes in many cases that you know how to do specialized searches with specific commands such as finger and whois but there are also more general pointers to Web sites for narrowing down your searches to specific colleges or commercial networks (like AOL, Compuserve, and others).
You'll notice in the FAQ that there is a Usenet news group called soc.net-people. This is your resource of last resort. I don't care what some friend told you about posting your question to this group in order to find your friend, don't do it until you read the "Tips on using soc.net-people." And even then think twice. If someone were trying to find you, would you want them asking about you on such a public forum, where heaven only knows how many people are reading? Exhaust every other means before you go this route, please.
As many Web sites as there are for searching telephone directories, e-mail lists, and Usenet postings, you serious searchers could be tangled in the Web for quite some time. I'd suggest having a standing order with your local pizza delivery to ensure that you get a least one meal a day. Even more casual searchers are likely to find that hours and hours have slipped away while you were looking for that old friend. If you're like me, you'll get sidetracked often. Have fun with it and happy hunting!
Linda Brigman is webmaster for Research Triangle Institute in NC, administering RTI's servers on the Internet and Intranet. She's the author of Web Site Management Excellence (Que, Aug. 1996) and an occasional contributor to WebMaster magazine (CIO Communications).
