The finger protocol typically provides details such as the user's login name, their full name, the terminal they are using, their idle time, when they last logged in, and their email address if available.

The 'finger' command in Linux is a user information lookup program. It provides details about users on a Linux system. You can use it like this: finger [username] .

The finger program was written in 1971 by Les Earnest who created the program to solve the need of users who wanted information on other users of the network. Information on who is logged in was useful to check the availability of a person to meet.

The finger command displays a M- before each converted character. When you specify users with the User parameter, you can specify either the user's first name, last name, or account name. When you specify users, the finger command, at the specified host, returns information about those users only in long format.