6.6 FINDING SOMEONE ON THE NET
So you have a friend and you want to find out if he has an Internet account to which you can write? The quickest way may be to just pick up the phone, call him and ask him. Although there are a variety of "white pages" services available on the Internet, they are far from complete — college students, users of commercial services such as CompuServe and many Internet public-access sites, and many others simply won't be listed. Major e-mail providers are working on a universal directory system, but that could be some time away. In the meantime, a couple of "white pages" services might give you some leads, or even just entertain you as you look up famous people or long-lost acquaintances. The whois directory provides names, e-mail and postal mail address and often phone numbers for people listed in it. To use it, telnet to
internic.net
No log-on is needed. The quickest way to use it is to type
whois name
at the prompt, where "name" is the last name or organization name you're looking for. Another service worth trying, especially since it seems to give beginners fewer problems, is the Knowbot Information Service reachable by telnet at
info.cnri.reston.va.us 185
Again, no log-on is needed. This service actually searches through a variety of other "white pages" systems, including the user directory for MCIMail. To look for somebody, type
query name
where "name" is the last name of the person you're looking for. You can get details of other commands by hitting a question mark at the prompt. You can also use the knowbot system by e-mail. Start a message to
netaddress@info.cnri.reston.va.us
You can leave the "subject:" line blank. As your message, type
query name
for the simplest type of search. If you want details on more complex searches, add another line:
man
Another way to search is via the Usenet name server. This is a system at MIT that keeps track of the e-mail addresses of everybody who posts a Usenet message that appears at MIT. It works by e-mail. Send a message to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu
Leave the "subject:" line blank. As your message, write
send usenet-addresses/lastname
where "lastname" is the last name of the person you're looking for.