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Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!howland.erols.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-xfer.netaxs.com!insync!academ!news.bihs.net!news.tamu.edu!news.utdallas.edu!nrchh45.rich.nt.com!bcarh8ac.bnr.ca!southpower.co.nz!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail Message-ID: <REPOST-6269.8086547851562.finding_877253489@qucis.QueensU.CA> X-Reposted-By: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: ...!kone!news.ccs.queensu.ca!qucis.queensu.ca!dalamb From: dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca (David Alex Lamb) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,soc.net-people,news.announce.newusers,news.newusers.questions,comp.answers,soc.answers,news.answers Subject: [Reposted due to Enlow UCE cancel]: FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses Supersedes: <finding_874229491@qucis.QueensU.CA> Followup-To: poster Date: 19 Oct 1997 09:31:49 GMT Organization: Queen's University at Kingston Lines: 862 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Expires: 2 Dec 1997 09:31:29 GMT X-Original-Message-ID: <finding_877253489@qucis.QueensU.CA> NNTP-Posting-Host: requin.qucis.queensu.ca Originator: dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca X-Comments: DtR Repost: The following Usenet article was cancelled, X-Comments: more than likely by someone other than the original poster. X-Comments: Please see the end of this posting for a copy of the cancel. X-Comments: Dave the Resurrector can be contacted at dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.mail.misc:42187 soc.net-people:15799 news.announce.newusers:3181 news.newusers.questions:624428 comp.answers:28649 soc.answers:8787 news.answers:115232 Archive-name: finding-addresses Version: $Id: finding.n,v 2.17 1997/08/23 15:50:03 dalamb Exp dalamb $ Copyright 1991,1992,1993,1994 Jonathan I. Kamens Copyright 1994,1995,1996,1997 David Alex Lamb. See end of file for copying permissions. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about finding e-mail addresses. This FAQ is available on the World-Wide Web at <URL:http://www.qucis.queensu.ca/FAQs/email/finding.html> This FAQ is also available in French at <URL:http://web.fdn.fr/fdn/doc-misc/find-e-mail-add/> ****************************************************************************** * Introduction * ****************************************************************************** A question which appears frequently on the Usenet is, "I know someone's name, and I think they might have an electronic mail address somewhere. How can I find it?" There are many different techniques for doing this. Several of them are discussed below. Your best bet is to try the pertinent methods in this posting in the order in which they are listed (well, sort of; at the very least, please try all the pertinent methods which do not involve posting queries to soc.net-people before resorting to that). I've listed "Direct contact" near the end of this list because, for some reason, people seem to be reluctant to call people on the telephone or write them a paper-mail letter asking what their E-mail address is, as long as there is even a remote chance that it might be found without asking. This attitude is somewhat counterproductive, since in most cases, it is much easier to get someone's E-mail address by asking them than it is by following the other methods outlined below. Furthermore, even if you do manage to find an E-mail address using one of the on-line methods described below, it is not guaranteed that the person at the other end of the line checks that address regularly or even that it is the correct address. Therefore, if you do have a telephone number that isn't too expensive to call, or if you have a paper-mail address and aren't in too much of a hurry, you can probably save yourself a lot of trouble by skipping all of the on-line methods listed below and going directly to "Direct contact." ****************************************************************************** * Avoid public distribution of individuals' addresses * ****************************************************************************** It is considered rude to widely distribute (e.g., in a Usenet posting) a person's E-mail address without his/her prior consent, even if the address is publicly available using one of the techniques described below or some other technique. It might seem that having one's E-mail address listed in a publicly accessible database is equivalent to distributing it, but this is not the case in practice, for three primary reasons: * Some people may not be aware that their addresses are available for others to locate. For example, the majority of Usenet posters are unaware of the database of Usenet E-mail addresses mentioned below. * When some effort is required to locate a person's address (e.g., using the techniques described below), only people who have a specific reason to send mail to him/her will go to the trouble. However, if the address is mentioned in a Usenet posting read by thousands of people, no effort is required to obtain it, and many more people will send him/her mail. Most people with E-mail addresses are not accustomed to receiving E-mail from strangers or large amounts of E-mail, and they may not be happy if they do. * As unwanted E-mail becomes more common, people will start to remove their addresses from public databases, which means that it will become more difficult to find people's addresses for legitimate reasons. In summary, if you want to advertise someone's E-mail address, get his/her permission before you do it. Besides, if you're going to advertise an address, it's a good idea to make sure it works first, and writing to it for permission is a good way to do that. ****************************************************************************** * Web Searches * ****************************************************************************** o E-mail and phone directories Changed: Sat Dec 21 1996 Several organizations let you search for addresses by filling in and submitting a form from your Web browser. In many cases these services populated their databases by scanning for addresses in USENET news postings. * 555-1212.com at <URL:http://www.555-1212.com/> is an on-line directory of telephone numbers, compiled from the three major telephone information vendors. Unlike many other search engines, it has few graphics to slow you down. It provides several other directory services listed at <URL:http://www.555-1212.com/welcome.html> as well * Four11 at <URL:http://www.four11.com/> is a commercial online directory service with over 10 million listings (as of August 1997) All Internet users are provided free basic access, which includes a free listing and free searching. You can also access the service by sending mail to info@four11.com. * POPULUS at <URL:http://www.populus.net> asks people register with them, providing personal information such as interests, college attended, and date of birth, then lets people search on this information. * Internet Address Finder at <URL:http://www.iaf.net/> has about 4.5 million listings as of July 1996. * Find mE-Mail at <URL:http://www.findmemail.com/> advertises itself as the place to post your new e-mail address, for your old e-mail friends. * Switchboard at <URL:http://www.switchboard.com/> is a Web-based telephone directory; its names are compiled from published white pages directories and other publicly-available sources. If you register a password with Switchboard, you can add additional information to your listing, including your email address. You can arrange to hide your email address (or other parts of your listing), while still allowing people to email you a brief note via Switchboard. * Phonebooke at <URL:http://www.phonebooke.com/> lets you search for people in the USA by name or phone number, and provides forms to interface with many other search engines, including Four11, the AT&T Internet directory, NYNEX' Big Yellow, and 555-1212.com. * Bigfoot at <URL:http://www.bigfoot.com/> has about 100 million white pages listings and 8 million e-mail listings as of December 1996. The company focuses on value-added services for e-mail users, complementing those of ISPs. o Altavista Created: Fri Jul 5 1996 Digital's Altavista search engine at <URL:http://www.altavista.digital.com> indexes Web pages and Usenet postings. If you suspect the person you are looking for has created a web page or posted to Usenet, you may be able to find them this way. o National white pages Changed: Thu Dec 12 1996 There are a few internet white pages based on nationality: * Belgium at <URL:http://www.advalvas.be/default.html>. * Brazil at <URL:http://www.supermail.com.br/>. * Finland at <URL:http://www.kotka.fi/>. * Germany at <URL:http://www.suchen.de/>. * Germany at <URL:http://www.finden.de/>. * Israel at <URL:http://www.ibm.net.il/WebPh>. * Italy at <URL:http://www.ats.it/wpages/>. * Sweden at <URL:http://directory.ausys.se/ecatalog/search.htm>. * Switzerland at <URL:http://www.swissinfo.ch/email/>. o lookup.com Changed: Fri Jul 5 1996 LookUP! at <URL:http://www.lookup.com/> merged with Four11 in the spring of 1996. ****************************************************************************** * Gopher and PH * ****************************************************************************** Gopher is an Internet-wide distributed document retrieval service. If your site has a gopher client program, you can use it to access gopher servers at other sites; domain X.edu might have a gopher server gopher.X.edu, but there's no guarantee. One kind of document sites often place under gopher is their phonebook; many phonebooks are managed through a system called PH, documented at <URL:http://www.amherst.edu/~atstarr/computers/ph.html>. WebPH at <URL:http://www.middlebury.edu/~its/Software/WebPh/> is a World- Wide Web interface PH. If a site you are interested has installed it, you can look up people from that site by filling in a query form. Unfortunately, there is no convention for how to guess where to find the WebPH or PH server given the site name. Most Gopher servers have pointers to a complete list of ph servers used by all sorts of organizations. You can enter various criteria, in an easy-to-use manner, and it will return the info that you didn't give (if, of course, there are no more than 20 entries that match. This is to prevent people getting mailing lists via the ph servers.) Many of the on-line methods for finding addresses documented below are easily accessible, with a consistent user interface, from the Internet Gopher burrow at the University of Minnesota. If you are on the Internet, you may want to try using Gopher to do your searching before going directly to any of the methods described below. Ask someone at your site to find out if Gopher clients are installed there. Or, to find out how to use it and/or install it yourself, see the comp.infosystems.gopher FAQ posting at <URL:gopher://mudhoney.micro.umn.edu:70/00/Gopher.FAQ>. ****************************************************************************** * Other Techniques * ****************************************************************************** o College and School Email Addresses The College Email FAQ at <URL:http://www.qucis.queensu.ca/FAQs/email/college.html> describes the account and E-mail address policies for graduate and undergraduate students at many universities and colleges. If you are looking for a university/college student, check those postings for the university or college in question and follow their instructions for finding out more. This FAQ is also posted regularly to soc.college as a collection of postings whose subjects start with "College Email Addresses." If the postings have expired at your site or has not been posted recently, you can get a copy of them using the instructions below(in the "Useful Usenet postings" section). If the university has a PH (phonebook) server, it may be listed in the Colleges and Universities PH server directory at <URL:http://home.cdsnet.net/~zachbo/others.html>. ClassMates at <URL:http://www.classmates.com> lets secondary school alumni freely register their e-mail addresses; the database covers US, Canada, and American Overseas high schools. o Usenet-addresses server If you think that your target may be on the Usenet and may have posted a message to the Usenet at some point in the past, you might be able to find his/her address in the Usenet address database on the machine rtfm.mit.edu. To query the database, send an E-mail message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with "send usenet-addresses/name" in the body of the message. The "name" should be one or more space-separated words for which you want to search; since the search is fuzzy (i.e., all of the words you specify do not have to match), you should list all of the words you think might appear in the address, including (for example) first and last name, possible username, and possible components of the host name (e.g. "mit" for a person who you think is at MIT). The case and order of the words you list are ignored. Note that multiple requests can appear (on separate lines) in mail to the mail server, but each request will be answered in a separate message. In many cases, you will get a list of quite a few matching addresses, and you will have to go through it looking for ones that may be the one you're looking for. However, the mail server will return a maximum of only 40 matches. Note that the usenet-addresses database is accessible via WAIS (in fact, the script that does mail server searches is actually just a front-end to a WAIS database) on two different hosts: rtfm.mit.edu and cedar.cic.net. In both cases, the database is called "usenet-addresses" and is on port 210. Note that the version on rtfm is slightly more up-to-date with respect to the master address list than the version on cedar. If you don't know what WAIS is, then don't worry about this paragraph; if you're curious, see the "comp.infosystems.wais" newsgroup. For more details about how to use the database, send the command "send usenet-addresses/help". o Inter-Network Mail Guide If you know which network/service your target has an account on (e.g. CompuServe, Fidonet), then the "Inter-Network Mail Guide" posting in comp.mail.misc *may* be able to provide you with some help, although it probably will not be particularly helpful unless you have some sort of address to start with (a small number of networks use full names as addresses, and the posting mentions when this is the case, but it doesn't apply in very many cases). See the instructions below for getting a copy of this posting if it isn't available in comp.mail.misc at your site. o whois/nicname Changed: Tue Jul 4 1995 Whois is the internet user name directory service. Do whois help or nicname -h to get a help message. The whois and nicname programs will check the database maintained at rs.internic.net (or nic.ddn.mil for U.S. military sites) for the given names. For example, nicname <name> or whois <name> or whois -h <host> <names> where <host> is some site with a whois server. This is only useful for people listed in the database. Many regional networks and some universities maintain their own NICs. You can also get some of this information by telneting to rs.internic.net and running whois and host there, or to nic.ddn.mil if you are looking for U.S. military personnel. Alternatively, you can issue a single command to the whois.internic.net server by typing "telnet whois.internic.net whois" in order to connect to it and then typing the command and hitting return; the "help" command will return several screens full of text, so if you need help, you should use a utility such as "tee" or "script" to capture the help message and save it for future reference. If you do not have Internet access, you can send mail to whois@whois.internic.net to query the "whois" database; send a message with "help" in the body to find out more information. Note, furthermore, that some sites run local "whois" databases to provide information about people inside their organizations. The only way to find out if your site runs such a database is to ask someone locally about it (see "Get more help locally" below), and the only way to find out about such databases at other sites (assuming, of course, that those databases are not mentioned in any of the other sources listed in this document) is to contact responsible individuals at those sites and ask (see "Finding a host name and asking someone there for help" below). o Other whois databases Quite a few other sites also run "whois" databases that can be connected to over the Internet using the whois protocol (using either the "whois" program or "telnet hostname whois" as described in the previous section). Some of those sites are listed here, and others are listed in a separate list, described in more detail below. The Ohio State University runs a "whois" database (on the machine "osu.edu") that has all of the faculty, staff, and students listed. It responds to "whois" queries in the normal fashion, or you can just send mail to firstname.lastname@osu.edu and it will try to deliver e-mail if the person has registered an e-mail address. You can also telnet to osu.edu and look- up a person. If you are unsure of the spelling this is a good way, as it does a soundex type search so exact matches are not necessary. No password is necessary. RIPE (a cooperative group of several European Internet providers) runs a "whois" database, with RIPE information, on "whois.ripe.net"; it is a European counterpart to "whois.internic.net". Matt H. Power of MIT <mhpower@athena.mit.edu> has compiled and maintains an extensive list of sites that run "whois" servers. The file can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from /pub/whois/whois-servers.list on sipb.mit.edu. In addition to E-mail addresses for individuals, "whois" servers often also contain contact information about domains. For example, asking whois.internic.net's server for information about "mit.edu" would tell you to look up "mit-dom" in order to get information about MIT's domain, and doing that would give you contact information about the people responsible for administrating that domain, including the handles of those individuals, which you can then look up to get still more information about them. o Other directory services There are several other directory services you may be able to use to search for your target. The person you are searching for may be using Pobox.com at <URL:http://pobox.com/pobox/>, which provides permanent email forwarding addresses You submit to a searchable database your real name and some biographical information; you receive short, memorable email aliases at pobox.com that forward to your current real mailbox. Whatever your real address is, you can be found at and mailed through pobox.com. Pobox.com is growing very quickly and has amassed a substantial database. To sign up or find a subscriber, use the Web address or send mail to info@pobox.com Many Bitnet sites have name servers that can be queried in one way or another. To get a list of them with documentation, send a mail message to listserv@bitnic.bitnet (a.k.a listserv@bitnic.educom.edu) with the command "send bitnet servers" in the body of the message. The IBM Corporate Internet Gateway provides a directory of users (which I believe contains only IBM employees, although I'm not certain) that is available to anyone who can send E-mail to it. If your target works for IBM (or you suspect s/he does), then this might be useful to you. To use it, send mail to nic@vnet.ibm.com with the command "whois lastname, firstname" in the subject or body of the message. If you are unsure of the spelling of the last name, use an asterisk (*) to indicate that the last name should be treated as a prefix, rather than a complete name. The first name is always treated as a prefix. For example, "whois Smith*, R" would return all people with a last name starting with "Smith" and a first name starting with "R", while "whois Smith, R" would return only those people with exactly the last name "Smith" and a first name starting with "R". Users of the directory are limited to 25 name searches per day. Each name that results is counted as a separate name search. For example, a single "whois Smith, R" that found Rodger Smith, Robert Smith, and Reginald Smith would count as three name searches. Multiple requests may be made in a single note provided that the number of names found does not exceed the daily limit of 25. RPI runs a white pages server for people interested in the field of communications. To find out how to use it, send mail to comserve@rpitsvm.bitnet (or comserve@vm.its.rpi.edu) with "help" in the body of the message. BITNIC (the BITNET Network Information Center) runs a name server of more general interest. To find out how to use it, send mail to netserv@bitnic.bitnet (again, netserv@bitnic.educom.edu can also be used) with "help" in the body of the message. There is an X.500 white pages service run by UNINETT. It is accessible by sending mail to the address Directory@UNINETT.NO (send a message with "help" in the subject or body to get more information). Furthermore, there is software for UNIX available for use as a convenient interface to the service. It is available for anonymous ftp in ~ftp/directory/directory.tar.Z on the machine nac.no. Finally, if the administrator of your site registers your organization with UNINETT (instructions about doing so are available with the software just mentioned), people from your site can then register in the database so that other people can look them up in it. KPN Research (formerly PTT Research) in the Netherlands runs a server that you can use to look up addresses for its employees. If you know someone who may work there, you can find out how to use the server by sending a mail message to whois@research.kpn.com with "help" in the body of the message. Note that this is not a "complete" whois site; it just supports limited mail server queries. AT&T Bell Labs runs a mailer on the host "att.com" that can get mail to about 400 employees in the Research Area of Bell Labs using their names as addresses. You can send mail to "lastname@att.com" or to "initials.lastname@att.com", where "initials" consists of one or more initials separated by dots. If the name is ambiguous, you will get a bounce message indicating several possible matches, and the appropriate address to use for each. Tim Pozar has set up a WAIS server that contains the FidoNet email addresses of Sysops of FidoNet BBSs. You can access it by connecting to the "nodelist" WAIS database on port 210 of kumr.lns.com; use the name(s) for which you wish to search as your search keywords. See above for more information about WAIS. PSI runs a X.500 directory server, accessible by sending mail to whitepages@wp.psi.com. In Australia, there are a number of methods you can use to find someone connected to AARNet. * There is an X.500 white pages service, accessible via a public access account on wp.adelaide.edu.au. To use it, log in as "fred" and select a user agent to run ("de" is probably the easiest). You can also send queries by mail to whitepages@wp.adelaide.edu.au (sending the query "help" will return instructions). * There is a netfind access point (see below) on Archie.AU. * A number of sites provide information via finger and whois. Information about hosts in the "ca" Internet domain (i.e., hosts in Canada) Is accessible via anonymous ftp to ftp.CDNnet.CA, or by mail to archive- server@relay.CDNnet.CA. You can get site domain names and host names, as well as the names and addresses of contact people for individual sites. For more information, retrieve the file /ca-domain/Introduction via anonymous ftp, or send a mail message to the mail server with "send ca-domain Introduction" in it. The information in this archive is also available via the Gopher service at <URL:gopher://nstn.ns.ca>. o Finding a host name and asking someone there for help If you know the organization, company, or whatever at which your target's account is likely to be located, then you might be able to get your hands on the host name of a machine at that location. Once you've done that, you can usually write to someone responsible for E-mail support at the site and ask for help finding the address you are seeking. See the section on below. Once you've got a host name and the person to contact, you need to figure out how to get the mail there, if it's on a network you don't know how to reach. See the "Inter-Network Mail Guide" posting referenced above if you need help with that. If you do go this route, make sure you provide as much information as you can about the person whose address you are seeking; remember that the more detailed (and polite!) you are, the more likely it is that the person you are contacting will be able to help you. Remember, too, that the person you are contacting is probably very busy, and responding to requests like yours is probably not one of his/her highest priorities, so be patient. o Using 'finger' Changed: Mon Sep 2 1996 Finger is a user information lookup program. If you've found a potential host name for your target using one of the other methods described here, and if you have direct access to the Internet, then you may be able to use the "finger" program/protocol to look up your target at a remote site. To finger someone at another site, you generally type "finger name@host". Andrew Starr maintains the Finger FAQ at <URL:http://www.amherst.edu/~atstarr/computers/finger.html>. Some sites provide Web-based interfaces to finger, such as Middlebury College at <URL:http://www.middlebury.edu/~otisg/cgi/HyperFinger.cgi>. o Netfind Netfind is a "white pages" service that allows you to query one service and have it search several other address databases of various sorts for addresses matching your query. It is a program for SunOS workstations and requires your computer to be directly connected to the Internet. The source code is available by anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.colorado.edu, in pub/cs/distribs/netfind. People without a Sun on which to run Netfind on can telnet to any of the following Netfind servers and log in as "netfind" (with no password): archie.au AARNet, Melbourne, Australia bruno.cs.colorado.edu University of Colorado, Boulder dino.conicit.ve Nat. Council for Techn. & Scien. Research Venezuela ds.internic.net InterNIC Directory and DB Services, S. Plainfield, NJ lincoln.technet.sg Technet Unit, Singapore macs.ee.mcgill.ca McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada malloco.ing.puc.cl Catholic University of Chile, Santiago monolith.cc.ic.ac.uk Imperial College, London, England mudhoney.micro.umn.edu University of Minnesota, Minneapolis netfind.oc.com OpenConnect Systems, Dallas, Texas netfind.vslib.cz Liberec University of Technology, Czech Republic nic.nm.kr Korea Network Information Center, Taejon, Korea nic.uakom.sk Academy of Sciences, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia redmont.cis.uab.edu University of Alabama at Birmingham There is a mailing list where new releases of netfind will be announced; you can subscribe by sending mail to netfind-users-request@cs.colorado.edu. Netfind was developed by Mike Schwartz <schwartz@cs.colorado.edu> and Panos Tsirigotis <panos@cs.colorado.edu>. o Knowbot Information Service The "Knowbot Information Service" (KIS) is another white pages service. Two hosts running KIS servers are info.cnri.reston.va.us and regulus.cs.bucknell.edu. Either can be reached on the Internet via telnet at port 185 (e.g. "telnet info.cnri.reston.va.us 185"), or via electronic mail (kis@cnri.reston.va.us or netaddress@regulus.cs.bucknell.edu). For more information about Knowbot, use the "man" command after connecting via telnet or in the body of your E-mail message. In addition, info.cnri.reston.va.us' KIS server can be reached using the Internet "whois" protocol described above. o Searching LISTSERV mailing lists Changed: Tue Jul 4 1995 Many sites around the network are running the VM/CMS LISTSERV package for managing mailing lists. If you have some reason to believe that a particular user may be a member of a mailing list on a LISTSERV site, you can ask that LISTSERV to send you a membership list and search it for your target. To do this, send mail to listserv@host (if "host" is a BITNET host, try using listserv@host.bitnet; if that doesn't work, you'll have to ask someone at your site how to send mail to BITNET hosts). In the body of your message, include the command "review list-name", where "list-name" is the name of the mailing list you wish to search. Alternatively, sending mail to the server with the line WHOIS <name> may catch the person. For example, listserv@buacca.bu.edu. This is an unlikely option. It also does not work with all listserv implementations. If you don't know what LISTSERV is and dont' know of any LISTSERV sites or mailing lists, then this technique probably isn't worth bothering with. o Direct contact If you have a paper mail address or telephone number for your target, call them or write to them and ask for an E-mail address. In that case, you might encounter the somewhat common situation where your target knows s/he has an E-mail address, but s/he doesn't know what it is. If this happens to you, then give him/her your E-mail address and ask him/her to send you mail (and if s/he can't figure out how, tell him/her to get someone at his/her site to help). The odds are that when you get his/her message, it'll contain a valid return address in it. o Get more help locally Often, the postmaster at your site (or whomever is responsible at your site for answering mail-related questions) has a large amount of knowledge that will help him/her to help you find the answer to your question. If you have been unable to find the answer for yourself, check with people locally and see if one of them can help you out. o postmaster Changed: Thu Jul 1 1993 Most sites have an individual responsible for network and mail operations at the site, usually with the userid of 'postmaster'. These people are usually very busy, so before bothering one of them, try telephoning the person you are trying to reach. Long distance is expensive for you, but less expensive, globally, than the postmaster's time. The one reasonable exception is if you're sending mail and getting messages in response that suggest some sort of mail system problem; you might report the problem to postmaster at your own site, who may in turn contact postmaster at the destination site. Many postmasters will refuse to answer questions about user identification, for reasons of privacy, though they may be willing to forward *your* address so your intended recipient can write to you. o The last resort -- soc.net-people If all the methods above have failed, you can consider posting a message to soc.net-people asking for help locating your target. Before doing so, however, you should read the "Tips on using soc.net-people" posting in that newsgroup. If it has expired, you can get a copy using the instructions below (note that the name in the instructions below may change when a new version with a new date is posted, so you may need to ask for an index of the soc.net-people archive to find out the name of the most recent version). Note that this is listed as THE last resort, to be tried even later than using a telephone number or paper mail address. Any posting to the Usenet uses the resources of the sites on the Usenet and of the networks that carry it; certainly, the total cost of transporting a Usenet message is more than the cost of a stamp or a short phone call. Since the benefit gained is to you and not to the Usenet as a whole, you should avoid posting if you possibly can. ****************************************************************************** * Finding Host Names * ****************************************************************************** o Whois The NIC "whois" database mentioned above contains site and organization information as well as information about individuals. Organization entries in the NIC database will usually list an administrative, technical and/or zone contact person, with his/her address, to whom you can write. You can also write to "postmaster" at almost any Internet host to get in touch with someone responsible for E-mail. o U. Texas Network Directory The University of Texas publishes a network directory. Although it hasn't been updated in a few years, it still provides a useful list of many site names. It is available for anonymous ftp from several different locations, including /net.directory/1988.netbook on emx.utexas.edu. It is BIG, so you might not have room to store it locally, unless you ask someone in charge to set up some space for it. You should NOT transfer it to /tmp every time you need it, or something like that; that's a horrible waste of network bandwidth. Contact people are usually listed in the site entries in the net directory, but you might want to try "postmaster" first. This directory is superseded by the book "The user's directory of computer networks," whose bibliography information is provided in the section below. Of course, you have to pay for the book, and you can't grep dead trees, but it's probably more up-to-date than the University of Texas directory. o UUCP maps Changed: Tue Jul 4 1995 The UUCP maps are posted in the comp.mail.maps newsgroup. See the posting "UUCP map for README" in that directory for more information. You can grep in the news spool or use your news reader's search facilities to search for a particular string (e.g. an organization name) in the comp.mail.maps postings. Each UUCP map entry lists the contact person for the entry. You can also search the UUCP maps by connecting to the "uumap" WAIS database on port 210 of wais.cic.net. For more information about WAIS, see above. o Netinfo You can also search UUCP maps using the University of California at Berkeley's Netinfo service (which also supports other services, such as looking up IP addresses for hosts on the Internet). You connect to it at port 117 of netinfo.berkeley.edu, e.g. on some systems, "telnet netinfo.berkeley.edu 117". The "ufind", "ufile", "uhost" and "upath" commands are used to look up information in the UUCP maps. For more information about Netinfo, connect to it and type "?". o Merit Network NetMail database Allows one to find the appropriate bitnet, internet or uucp address for a site given part of the address. telnet hermes.merit.edu At the "Which Host?" prompt, type netmailsites then enter any part of the address you want. o nslook/nslookup and hostq programs Some sites have programs which will give you information about a host given its name or IP address. Some such programs include nslook, nslookup, and hostq. o /etc/hosts Changed: Mon Feb 15 1993 Mail routing on UNIX machines on the internet use to use a large file called /etc/hosts to validate host names. We used to advise you to examine this file to guess host names when all else fails - but that really isn't useful anymore. Use one of the above methods instead. ****************************************************************************** * Commercial Networks * ****************************************************************************** o Internet to America Online Changed: Sat Dec 7 1996 Creating the Internet version of an America Online address requires that you know the conversion rule. You ignore the case, remove the spaces, and add "@aol.com" to the end of the address. Thus, an America Online address "Jane Doe" becomes "janedoe@aol.com" (without the quotes, of course). Internet mail incoming to America Online is trucated at 27 kilobytes. To find addreses, send e-mail to NameSearch@aol.com and provide the user's real name, state, and city. Their World-Wide Web service at <URL:http://home.aol.com/> allows you to search for members' home pages containing the search terms you specify. o Internet to Compuserve Changed: Sat Dec 7 1996 If someone's Compuserve ID is 77777,7777 you can send Internet mail to 77777.7777@compuserve.com (change the comma to a dot, and append the site name). Their Web directory at <URL:http://www.sprynet.com/ourworld/searchow/> lets you search for people by name, location, or occupation. o Internet to DELPHI Changed: Sat Dec 7 1996 Delphi users can recieve Internet EMail at <username>@delphi.com. Usernames are user-defined and vary from handles to real names. Their Web directory at <URL:http://www.delphi.com/dir-html/simple_web_search.html> lets you search for member Web pages containing your search terms, or browse their username directory. o Internet to GEnie Changed: Sat Dec 7 1996 Creating the Internet version of a GEnie address requires that you add "@genie.com" to the end of the address. Thus, a GEnie address "J.DOE3" becomes "J.DOE3@genie.com" (without the quotes, of course). There is no added cost to GEnie users (beyond normal connect-time charges) to send or receive Internet mail. GEnie addresses are case-insensitive, but you should preserve periods. o Internet to Prodigy Changed: Sat Dec 7 1996 Prodigy users receive Internet mail via the address format abcd12a@prodigy.com where "abcd12a" is the recipient's Prodigy user ID. We have not found an Internet-accessible directory. o Internet to T-Online (Germany) Created: Wed Nov 22 1995 Since Summer 1995, T-Online (former BTX) users have access to the Internet. Use the T-Online Id of the recipient and add -000x where x is the appropriate user number, mostly 1. The T-Online Id is mostly equal to the telephone-number of the person, inculding the city prefix. To send a mail to a T-Online user in Frankfurt (city prefix: 069), with the telefon number 123456, send Internet mail to 069123456-0001@T-Online.de. ****************************************************************************** * References * ****************************************************************************** If you want to learn more about computer networks and how they interact with each other, these books and articles might be interesting and useful to you: * !%@:: A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing & Networks by Donnalyn Frey and Rick Adams ISBN 1-56592-031-7 (published by O'Reilly, E-mail nuts@ora.com) (current edition published in August 1993; $24.95 cover price) * The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide, by John S. Quarterman, Digital Press, Bedford, MA, 1990. $50. Digital order number EY-C176E-DP-SS, Digital Press ISBN 155558-033-5, Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-565607-9. * ``Strategies for Finding People on Networks,'' by John S. Quarterman, Matrix News, Vol. 1, No. 6, pg. 3, Matrix Information and Directory Services, Austin, Texas, September 1991. * The user's directory of computer networks, ed. Tracy L. LaQuey, Digital Press, Bedford, MA, 1990. Digital order number EY-C200E-DP, ISBN 1-55558-047-5. * Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide, by Brendan Kehoe, Prentice Hall, July 1992. ISBN 0-13-010778-6. (This is the second edition. The first edition is available for free on-line. To find out how to get it, send mail to archive-server@cs.widener.edu with "send zen hints" in the body of the message.) ****************************************************************************** * Useful Usenet Postings * ****************************************************************************** Subject: Gopher (comp.infosystems.gopher) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher,news.answers Subject: FAQ: College Email Addresses 1/3 [Monthly posting] Subject: FAQ: College Email Addresses 2/3 [Monthly posting] Subject: FAQ: College Email Addresses 3/3 [Monthly posting] Newsgroups: soc.college,soc.net-people,news.answers Subject: Updated Inter-Network Mail Guide Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,alt.bbs.lists,alt.internet.services,comp.misc,comp.answers,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: Tips on using soc.net-people [l.m. 13/09/92] Newsgroups: soc.net-people [Same as above -- check the archives for a newer version if this one isn't available.] Available in the indicated Usenet newsgroup(s), or via anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in the files: /pub/usenet/news.answers/gopher-faq /pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/college-email/part1 /pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/college-email/part2 /pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/college-email/part3 /pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/inter-network-guide /pub/usenet/soc.net-people/Tips_on_using_soc.net-people_[l.m._13_09_92] Also available from mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu by sending a mail message containing any or all of: send usenet/news.answers/gopher-faq send usenet/news.answers/mail/college-email/part1 send usenet/news.answers/mail/college-email/part2 send usenet/news.answers/mail/college-email/part3 send usenet/news.answers/mail/inter-network-guide send usenet/soc.net-people/Tips_on_using_soc.net-people_[l.m._13_09_92] Send a message containing "help" to get general information about the mail server. ****************************************************************************** * Credits * ****************************************************************************** This FAQ was originally maintained by Jonathan I. Kamens; David Lamb took over maintenance in January 1994. In July 1995 David merged in the general information on finding addresses from the College E-mail FAQ, originally created by Mark Kantrowitz. Comments about, suggestions about or corrections to this posting are welcomed. If you would like to ask me to change this posting in some way, the method I appreciate most is for you to actually make the desired modifications to a copy of the posting, and then to send me the modified posting, or a context diff between my posted version and your modified version (if you do the latter, make sure to include in your mail the "Version:" line from my posted version). Submitting changes in this way makes dealing with them easier for me and helps to avoid misunderstandings about what you are suggesting. These people provided useful comments, information and/or suggestions: Randall Atkinson <atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil> Ed Blackman B. Blissenbach <brubli@purodha.gun.de> Mark Brader <msb@sq.com> Bruno Chatras Jim Cheetham Huang Chih-Hsien Marcel Dorenbos Alessio Dragoni <drago@ats.it> Ralph E. Droms <URL:http://www.bucknell.edu/~droms/> Donald E. Eastlake, III Marshall Gene Flax Arthur K. Ho Patrick Hoepfner <hoepfner@heasfs.gsfc.nasa.gov> Dan Hoey <hoey@aic.nrl.navy.mil> Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho@ifi.uio.no> Ivar Mar Jonsson Jonathan I. Kamens <jik@security.ov.com> Mark Kantrowitz <mkant+@cs.cmu.edu> Dan Kegel (dank at alumni.caltech.edu) Jonathan Kochmer Patt Leonard <leonard@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu> Jerry Martin <nic@osu.edu> Skip Montanaro <URL:http://www.automatrix.com/~skip/> Dan Muller <danm@zipnet.net> Eric De Mund <ead@ixian.com> Hank Nussbacher <hank@ibm.net.il> Jerry Peek <jpeek@jpeek.com> <URL:http://www.jpeek.com/~jpeek/> Tim Pozar <pozar@kumr.lns.com> Mark Prior John S. Quarterman <URL:http://www.mids.org/> Gowri Ramanathan <URL:http://www.cs.orst.edu/~ramanag/> Michael Santullo <santullo@Four11.com> Jenny Schmidt <jenny@whowhere.com> Ellen Keyne Seebacher Rolf E. Sonneveld Andrew Starr <URL:http://www.amherst.edu/~atstarr/> Donald Stoy Robert Ullmann Edward Vielmetti Peter M. Weiss <pmw1@psuvm.psu.edu> Bill Wells <URL:http://ack.berkeley.edu/~wcwells/> Martin Westphal <martin@PNN.sgz-bank.com> Bill Wohler <wohler@sap-ag.de> Peter J. Woodrow ****************************************************************************** * Copying * ****************************************************************************** You can reprint (or archive, or make CDs of) this FAQ posting anywhere you want, as long as the following conditions are met: * You use as recent a version of the FAQ as possible. * The copyright holders' names (as well as the section listing other people who have contributed) stays on it. * Any modifications (other than typesetting changes) you make to it are clearly designated as your modifications. If you are significantly reformatting the information in the FAQ, then you don't have to explicitly show every change from the original, but you make clear that what you are printing is derived from our FAQ rather than a direct copy of it. * You tell people where to find updated versions of it, i.e., what newsgroups it appears in. * If paying outside authors for articles is standard practice of the forum in which you wish to reprint it, then we would appreciate some sort of reimbursement for the reprinting. However, we leave this to your discretion (i.e., you can pay us or not; if you choose to pay us, the amount can be whatever you think is appropriate). -- http://www.qucis.queensu.ca/home/dalamb/ ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Rogue cancel from Michael Enlow, X-Cancelled-by etc. are forged. Further information can be acquired at http://www.sputum.com/ucepage.htm, or http://rampages.onramp.net/~eholmes/enlow/enlowce.html You can express your displeasure with Mr. Enlow by contacting him at: enlow@direcpc.com Control: cancel <finding_877253489@qucis.QueensU.CA> Newsgroups: soc.net-people Path: ...!news.hn.netlink.co.nz!canterbury.ac.nz!southpower.co.nz!nobody From: rra@eyrie.org,sw@eyrie.org,rgm@eyrie.org Subject: cmsg cancel <finding_877253489@qucis.QueensU.CA> Approved: rra@eyrie.org,sw@eyrie.org,rgm@eyrie.org Message-ID: <cancel.finding_877253489@qucis.QueensU.CA> X-No-Archive: Yes Sender: dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca (David Alex Lamb) X-Cancelled-By: rra@eyrie.org,sw@eyrie.org,rgm@eyrie.org Organization: Southpower Ltd Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1997 16:23:18 GMT Lines: 2 The article was canceled on 10/19/97 at 10:09:44 AM with the Usenet Cancel Engine (UCE).