Finger an email address
"finger" AN EMAIL ADDRESS
Hope you'll find this information useful:
"finger" is a way to find out information about a computer account. If you're on a UNIX system, this command should be built in. For example, if you want some information on Dr. Kenneth Stollery, Undergraduate Advisor for the Department of Economics (stollery@artshh.watstar.uwaterloo.ca), you can type in "finger stollery@artshh.watstar.uwaterloo.ca", and see what comes back.
Unfortunately, most of us are not directly on UNIX systems. There are "finger servers" located on the Internet that could help you out. The one I use is at the Computer Science Department at Indiana State University. For example, if I would like some information on Dr. Stollery's account, I would type in the following URL in my web browser
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/finger/artshh.watstar.uwaterloo.ca/stollery
Note that the userid is after the last slash, and the machine name is between the second-last and last slashes.
I typed in the above in Netscape, and here is what was returned:
Login name: stollery In real life: Kenneth Stollery Office: hh207, 3635 Home phone: 746-6608 139 Candlewood Cr., Waterloo Directory: /u/stollery
Shell: /bin/csh Last on: Thu Aug 14 11:29:43 1997 Terminal: ttyq9 from artshh85.watstar New Mail: Sun Oct 11 00:42:26 1998 Last read: Fri Oct 9 15:22:06 1998
Humm...seems like Dr. Stollery is giving out his home number and address. Other useful information such as office location and extension is usually available. Note that if you want to check when email was last read, you should look under "Last read" instead of "Last on".
"Fingering" is usually not considered an invasion of privacy, as the account owner must consent to this information being given out (by setting up the account in a certain way) before this information is accessible by "fingering".