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 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.

In computer networking, the Name/Finger protocol and the Finger user information protocol are simple network protocols for the exchange of human-oriented status and user information.