E-mail may be everywhere, but you can't write to pals on the Net if you can't find them.
Michael Swaine
You're pretty darn sure an old friend is on the Net, but you've lost touch. How can you find her e-mail address? It ain't easy. For various reasons, there is no central directory of Internet users. The structure of user names isn't even consistent from place to place. Still, if your friend has an e-mail address, her name is in a directory somewhere. The trick is finding that directory.
Use What You Know.
If you know the name of her server (often the name of a company or service provider, as in macuser.com or netcom.com), try Peter Lewis' Finger utility, available at ftp://cadadmin.cadlab.vt.edu//pub/peterlewis. Finger might get you her e-mail address, along with other data, such as the last time she logged into her account. This strategy works only if the server's directory is published on the Net and you've guessed her user name correctly.
Just Guess.
Although there is no surefire way to find someone's account, e-mail addresses are often guessable. It may take several tries with Finger. User names often consist of first name, last name, a combination of the two, or even initials. Here are some famous examples: Jean-Louis Gassee, of Be Labs, is jlg@be.com; General Magic's Bill Atkinson is atkinson@genmagic.com; artificial-intelligence pioneer and MIT professor Marvin Minsky is minsky@ai.mit.edu; Marc Andreessen, of Netscape, is marca@netscape .com; Bill Clinton is president@whitehouse .gov; and Steve Wozniak is steve@woz.org.
Serious People Seekers.
If waving a finger and guessing don't help, try Knowbot (http://info.cnri.reston.va.us/kis.html), a metaserver that searches various other directories, including MCI Mail, The Internet White Pages, and seven others. Give it a name (first, last, or user name) and whatever other information you can, and it will mount a search.
Four11 is a commercial directory service, although basic use and listing are free. It's easier to use than most of the alternatives. You can search by first name, last name, company, university, hobbies, and more. It relies on the same name sources as the other tools, lists submitted by service providers, and its own listings (you must let yourself be listed to use it). Four11 claims to have access to 1.5 million listings (including 200,000 of its own) -- a fraction of the Net, but still impressive. You can find it at http://www.four11.com.
People seekers such as Four11 and Knowbot often use newsgroup posting information. All the users who have ever posted a message to a newsgroup have put their e-mail addresses out there for the collecting, and they have been collected. MIT has a big list of e-mail addresses culled in this way, and you can search it directly. It's tricky to use, so download the instructions first, by sending e-mail to mail-serve @pit-manager.mit.edu with the word help in the message body. One advantage of searching a newsgroup-based list is that you're more likely to find people who have accounts on online services and whose names are therefore not available via other search methods.
Still no luck? Consider the list of people-search resources at http://www.rpi.edu/Internet/Guides/decemj/icmc/cultur -people-lists.html. Is your old friend a Netceleb? Check Who's Who on the Internet, at http://web.city.ac.uk/~cb157/pages.html. I hope your friend's not on the Dead People Server, at http://web.syr.edu/~rsholmes/dead/index.html.
Also, Internet experts have long touted something called the X.500 standard, which may one day produce a global hierarchy of e-mail addresses. Today is not that day. You can see how far X.500 directories have come, however, at http://www.es.net/hypertext/X.500.html.
If your friend has somehow evaded all these directories, perhaps she's too busy working on her home page to send e-mail. Yahoo has thousands of listings for personal and family Web pages. You can search the database or go directly to http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/People, which leads to personal-page links and more directories.
Tip of the Month
If there are so many ways to find someone's e-mail address, is there any way to maintain your anonymity when sending messages? There is. Send e-mail to help@anon.penet.fi to learn how.
Don't Know Finger from Thumb?
MacUser maintains a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the Internet, MacUser itself, and this column specifically. Send mail to faq@macuser.com. MacUser's address on the World Wide Web is http://www.zdnet.com/~macuser/. You can reach me at traveler@macuser.com.
