Speak Freely for Windows

Speak Freely's "Look Who's Listening" facility allows you (at your sole discretion) to publish a directory entry on a server so other people on the Internet can see you're on line and willing to accept calls. If your Internet connection is via a dial-up line (SLIP or PPP connection) which assigns you as different Internet (IP) address and/or host name each time you connect, Look Who's Listening allows people to find your address and contact you any time you're dialed in.

If you'd like to publish your contact information on a Look Who's Listening server, use the Phonebook/Edit Listing... menu item to display the dialogue box shown above. Set the "Server" field to the host name or Internet address of the Unix site that is running the server. A list of servers operating at the time this version of Speak Freely was released appears in the section "Finding on-line users". The information in your directory entry will be visible only to users who query the same server on which you've published it. This allows private networks to set up an in-house Look Who's Listening server that is not accessible to everybody on the Internet.

Enter the information you wish to publish in the various "User identification" fields. The E-mail address is required; all the other fields may be left blank. Think carefully before publishing your telephone number and location; you are potentially disclosing this information to every user on the Internet. If you include a telephone number, please remember to include your international dialing country code and area code. The country code for Canada and the United States is 1.

Your E-mail address is the primary means by which others contact you; enter the address you usually give to individuals who wish to contact you or include, for example, on your business card. It needn't have anything to do with the host and network on which you're running Speak Freely. For example, if you usually give out your E-mail address at work, you might specify jetson@sprockets.com even though you connect to the Internet at home as george@slip3986.terra.ssol.net.

The information you supply will be sent to the named server only if the "List in directory" box is checked. If you don't check "List in directory", your identity information will only be disclosed to people you connect to.

Normally, the server returns all active sites which contain the query string in either the E-mail address or full name fields. If you check the "Exact match only" box, only queries which exactly match your E-mail address will return your contact information. Further, checking "Exact match only" excludes your entry from the World-Wide Web document published by the server listing all currently active sites. This allows dial-up users to permit those knowing their E-mail address to contact them without informing any curious Internet user that they're on line. The security-conscious should note that this protection is provided by the Look Who's Listening server, and assumes the site you contact is running an unmodified version of the server program which is operating as intended.