This is a simple protocol which provides an interface to the Name and Finger programs at several network sites. These programs return a friendly, human-oriented status report on either the system at the moment or a particular person in depth.

The fingerd daemon returns information about the users currently logged in to a specified remote host. If you execute the finger command specifying a user at a particular host, you will obtain specific information about that user. The FINGER Protocol must be present at the remote host and at the requesting host.

The finger command may also be used to look up users on a remote system. The format is to specify the user as User@Host. If you omit the user name, the finger command provides the standard format listing on the remote system.

Finger command is a user information lookup command which gives details of all the users logged in. This tool is generally used by system administrators. It provides details like login name, user name, idle time, login time, and in some cases their email address even.