Finger

Aside from determining the origin of an email, a finger can also report information on a sender’s status. This may include whether they are currently logged onto their system, when their most recent session occurred along with many other details. In order to gather information about a sender, one must first have a finger application installed on their computer. Many of these applications are also found on the web in what are known as finger gateways. A finger gateway allows a user to enter the email address they wish to track on the site in which the information is retrieved from a database. To complete the process, a server at the other end must be configured to support finger requests. Many universities, colleges and large corporations have developed finger facilities. An ISP (Internet Service Provider) may also set up information about it’s users so that they may tracked by others. Users can learn more details of how this works by entering their own email address at a finger gateway.