Finding Email Addresses

Finding Email Addresses

by John Caywood ; 15 Feb 1996

Abstract

The best way to get someone's email address is to ask them, but if that's not possible there are resources on the Web and other places that can help you. This presentation lists some of them, and describes how to use those programs whose use is not obvious.

The source for this presentation is David Alex Lamb's FAQ: How to find people's Email addresses which is posted regularly to

comp.mail.misc,
    soc.net-people, news.announce.newusers, comp.answers, soc.answers,

and other groups. It is also available at Queens University , the author's institution.

Commonly-used resources

This document lists only the most commonly-used resources described in the FAQ. Refer to the FAQ itself for more details, and for resources not listed here. Each one of these is discussed separately below:

Phone or snail mail
Web pages
Usenet-addresses server
Inter-Network Mail Guide
whois databases
pobox.com
directory services
netfind
finger
other services

NOTE

It is considered rude to distribute a person's email address without his/her prior consent -- even when that address can be found with one of the public search methods discussed here.

Use Phone or Snail Mail

The best approach is to ask the person by phone or snail mail. An address you find in a database may be out of date, or may be to an account the person no longer uses

If they're not sure what their address is, ask them to send email to you -- you can then save their address in your address book.

Web Pages

Searchable databases of email addresses are available on the Web. These three are supposed to include everyone automatically. They are also searchable by anyone, without a fee or any other requirements. All three offer what they call a membership, though it's currently free. With membership, you supply accurate information, and you get extra search capabilities.

Although not originally intended to find people's email addresses, the ability of this general-purpose Web search engine to search both Web pages and Usenet news articles can, in fact, find email addresses. Try it!

Digital's AltaVista search engine

Usenet-Addresses Server

This server has an index of all people who have ever posted to any Usenet newsgroup. To use it, send email to

    mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu

    (no subject)

    send usenet-addresses/firstname lastname

Inter-Network Mail Guide

This document describes how to send email from one network to another (for example: from internet to fidonet). It also includes some information on forming email address from person's name.

It is posted biweekly to comp.mail.misc, alt.bbs.lists, and other newsgroups

'whois' Databases

The whois server looks up both people and domain names. The default server on most systems is whois.internic.net, because this program is most often used to look up information about networks and domain names. As a result, whois is most useful for "network people" -- that is, for network and system administrators. Registration of regular Internet users is possible, but is not automatic, so the likelihood of finding someone who isn't a etwork person is low.

You must use this program from a command-line prompt, like this:

  % whois haynes,s

There are other, organization-specific whois servers. You can get a list of servers by FTP from MIT .

P.O. Box .com

P.O. Box is a permanent email forwarding service. Their search engine lets you look up their customers; some addresses from other sources are also available.

You can also contact them by email to

	info@pobox.com

Directory Services

Specific servers at well-known companies can help if you know the person works there. For example,

IBM: nic@vnet.ibm.com send message; whois lastname,firstname
AT & T: lastname@att.com
PSI: message to whitepages@wp.psi.com

netfind

Netfind is a relatively old white-pages service. It's really just a text-oriented front-end to whois, finger, and similar services.

To use the service, telnet to University of Colorado or a mirror server and follow the instructions. Help is available if you're confused.

In general, netfind is most useful if person attends/works for a college, university, or government agency.

'finger' servers

The finger program lets you look up an email if you have a person's first or last name, and you know the machine or Internet host they log into. Another old service, finger is primarily useful within a network. Use it this way:

	% finger john

Because finger reads some system files, it is a potential security hole. Many Internet service providers do not accept finger requests from the outside world -- only from their own machines.

Other Services

The FAQ cited above lists many more services; here a just a few:

The Knowbot Information Service (KIS) is done through a telnet session to info.cnri.reston.va.us on port 185
Some LISTSERV servers will send a list of subscribers in response to the message review list-name
Send mail to postmaster@domain if you know which ISP or online service the person uses, but can't otherwise find the email address.
Some services will forward email to the person for you, but for privacy reasons will not give out the address. If the person you're trying to reach wants you to know how to reach them, they'll respond to you.
Read soc.net-people for more hints

More Resources

Other people have done Web pages to help with email address searches. They go beyond the FAQ cited above, and have links to various search engines and other resources.

Use any one of them as a starting point. There's a lot of overlap in the resources mentioned, but each has a few links the others don't have.

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