1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

Online research and reporting 91
Tracing e-mail addresses
Just like a web address URL, you can tell quite a lot from an e-mail
address. There are four main components to any e-mail address.
For example, meward@uclan.ac.uk is the address for my e-mail
box at my place of work, the University of Central Lancashire in
the UK. To break it down:
meward is the user name;
@ stands for ‘at’ – this separates the user name from the rest of
the e-mail address;
uclan is the computer at my place of work (u is University, c is
Central, lan is Lancashire) which hosts my e-mail box; and
ac.uk is the domain for British Universities.
Although it is worth trying to guess a web site URL, it is not as
easy for e-mail. The problem lies with the user name. You might
be able to guess or find out the name of the host computer and the
domain, but there are different systems for user names.
Some host computers use initials and surnames, some use first
names and surnames. Some put a full stop between the first name
and the surname. Some do not.
Also, what happens if there is more than one Mike Ward with an
e-mail box on the host computer to which you are sending the
e-mail? Then the user name will usually have a number after it and
you would need to know that number. If you were sending to John
Smith, would he be j.smith1, j.smith5 or j.smith25?
So guessing an e-mail address can be fraught with difficulty,
particularly if the person in question only has a private mail box.
However, if that person works for an organization and for some
reason you cannot trace him or her by telephone, try the
following:
go the organization’s web site;
see if the individual’s e-mail address is listed on the site (the
‘about us’ or ‘contacts’ sections are good places to look if the
site does not have a search function);
if the person is not there, scrutinize the e-mail addresses of
those who are there, noting the host computer name and