RES-Links: Finding People/Organizations/Hosts


Want to find someone on the Internet? These are a few tools available to help find E-mail address, organization, host, domain, phone nunmber, etc. through the Internet.

Note: There is no single good way for finding people on the internet, if one tool doesn't work, try another.

How to Find People's E-mail Addresses

Gateway to Search Tools

Finger


Finger retrieves information about a user registered on a host computer using an E-mail address.

Enter your query in one of these formats: hostname or username@hostname.
Where username is the optional person's first, last, or login name and the hostname is the host to search.

Netfind


Netfind provides a simple Internet White Pages directory search facility. Given the name of a person on the Internet and a rough description of where the person works, Netfind attempts to locate information about the person. It does so using a seed database of domains and hosts in the network.

If the person being sought is at a site that is not directly connected to the Internet (e.g. the site is connected only through a mail forwarding gateway), Netfind informs the user that the person cannot be found.

Netfind uses the Internet protocols SMTP and Finger. Because of the dynamic nature of Netfind's search procedures, and variations in Internet availability, different results can be obtained for the same search on different occasions.

Enter your query in this format: name key key...
Where name is the person's first, last, or login name and the key words are hints at the location to search (domain, organization name, ...).

Usenet-Addresses Server


Extract from How to Find People's E-mail Addresses :

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 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.

For more details about how to use the database, send the command "SEND USENET-ADDRESSES/HELP".

Knowbot Information Service (KIS)


KIS searches various Internet directory services simultaneously (Databases kept by universities/companies, Databases kept by Network Information Centers (e.g. The InterNic, RIPE), Finger, Whois, X.500, etc.) to find someone's street address, email address and phone number.

Four11 Directory Services


FOUR11 is an Internet White Page directory allowing free searching of E-mail address or personal Web page (over 1 Million listings). (Note: You must sign-up(free) in order to search and many advanced features are available only with membership upgrades.)

In addition to listing yourself, you can search for other online users by: First/Last Name, Location, E-mail Address, Group Connections, Domain.

LookUP


LookUP! is a directory service which provides easy-to-use Name to Email address mapping (maps Names to Email addresses.) The LookUP! database includes hundreds of thousands of entries and is continuously updated. LookUP! has two search screens, one for basic searching and one for advanced searching (for members only - membership is currently free.)

Basic Email Search allows you to search for other online users by: First/Last Name, Location. The person's name must be specified; the location is optional.

In Advanced Email Search, every field may be an arbitrary regular expression. Using Advanced Searching you may also specify the specific Email top-level domain which you wish to search (e.g. "edu, "com", etc.) or which directory, either business or individual you would like to search.

Internet Address Finder


Internet Address Finder (IAF) is the easiest and most comprehensive way to locate Internet email addresses. IAF is a free white pages service. You may also register with IAF so that others can locate you.

IAF allows you to search for other online users by: Last Name, First Name, Organization, Domain. The person's name must be specified; the First Name, Organization, Domain are optional. You can use a wildcard('*') in any field if you are uncertain of the correct spelling. You can also search for User Information (reverse email lookup) by entering his/her Email address.

OKRA Directory Service


OKRA will help you find email addresses of your friends and organizations. Essentially, there are two functions provided, submitting a query, and performing and add/delete from the database. The database is built from selected Usenet Newsgroups and Finger requests.

You type in some text referring to the person or organization you are interested in. All text entered must make an exact match (if one name doesn't match, try a similar spelling). Once you have typed in text pertaining to your search, click the Query Database button. For accurate results, the more information you can enter about an individual, the more likely you will find exactly the person you are looking for.

WHOIS


WHOIS provides a way of finding domains, networks, networking organizations, hosts and people. The information provided may include organization name, address and telephone number, host name, location, administrative contact, domain server and IP address, people name, telephone and E-mail address, etc.

Enter your query in this format: key
Where key is the location to search (domain, organization name, ...) or a person's name.

Internet Servers/Domains


Search for domains by address, keyword, country or category (EDU,COM...). The information provided may include organization name, host name, location, etc.

Ping


WWPing is a form for "pinging" WWW Servers. It can be used to query Internet domain name servers (gives IP address). It can also be used for simple internet pinging, and for HTTP pinging, with server identification. WWPing offers the ability to identify and check the state of internet sites and WWW Servers (WWPing requests echo from network host; see if remote host is up).

X.500


X.500 (OSI Directory Service) provides globally distributed directory service. It will find people and organization in the X.500 directory.

X.500 is used primarily for its lookup capabilities, ie, querying a database for information on a person (postal address, telephone number, E-mail address, etc.) or an organization. The basic fields for searching are the person's name, the name of the person's organization (and department within the organization) and the country.

Phone Related

Yellow Pages

See Also...


Copyright © 1995 - Sylvain Provencher