LINGUIST List 6.995

Thu Jul 20 1995

FYI: Finding Email Addresses

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <dseelyemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. James Magnuson, finding email addresses: advice

There seem to be pretty frequent requests for email addresses
on the Linguist List. People with Unix accounts can use
the "finger" command to look up addresses -- if they know
the name and affiliation of the person they're looking for
(others may have access to some sort of finger utility).

For example, there was a recent request for the internet
address of someone whose bitnet address is ESCATTONALBNYVMS

Here's how I used finger to find his internet address:

 finger ESCATTONALBNYVMS
finger: ALBNYVMS: unknown host

 finger ESCATTONALBNYVMS.edu
finger: ALBNYVMS.edu: unknown host

Well, ALBNYVMS doesn't sound very internet-like, so let's
start guessing:

 finger scattonalbany.edu
[albany.edu]
(There is no account SCATTON on this node.)

 Name: Ernest Scatton
 Title: Professor, German and Slavic Languages + Literat
 Address: Humanities 246
 University at Albany
 1400 Washington Av
 Albany NY 12222-0001
 Phone: +1 518-442-4224
 Bitnet: ESCATTONALBNYVMS
 Internet: escattoncnsvax.albany.edu

There it is. If you have less information -- for example,
you know the person is somewhere in New York state, but not
where exactly -- you can use one of the "white pages"
services available. A good starting point is:
http://home.netscape.com/commun/internet_white_pages.html

Happy hunting!