WebFinger is a protocol specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF in RFC 7033 that allows for discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI.[1] Information about a person might be discovered via an acct: URI, for example, which is a URI that looks like an email address.
WebFinger is specified as the discovery protocol for OpenID Connect,[2] which is a protocol that allows one to more easily log in to various sites on the Internet.[3]
The WebFinger protocol is used by federated software, such as GNU social,[citation needed] Diaspora,[4] or Mastodon,[5] to discover users on federated nodes and pods, as well as the remoteStorage protocol.[6]
As a historical note, the name "WebFinger" is derived from the old ARPANET Finger protocol, but it is a very different protocol designed for HTTP.[7]
The protocol payload is represented in JSON format.
- ^ Jones, Paul E.; Salgueiro, Gonzalo; Jones, Michael B.; Smarr, Joseph (September 2013). "RFC 7033: WebFinger".
- ^ "Final: OpenID Connect Discovery 1.0 incorporating errata set 1". openid.net. Retrieved 2022-12-19.
- ^ "OpenID Connect | OpenID". 2011-08-01. Retrieved 2022-12-19.
- ^ Clemens (2011-09-17). "How Diaspora Connects Users". Sarah Mei. Retrieved 2022-12-19.
- ^ "WebFinger - Mastodon documentation". docs.joinmastodon.org. Retrieved 2022-12-19.
- ^ remoteStorage protocol draft at the IETF website.
- ^ Introducing WebFinger