How to Find a Friend in a Chat Room

Chatting with a friend online via a chat room is a fun activity. However, it can be difficult because, due to the amount of anonymity in a chat room, you may not know who or if your friend is in the room. This is especially true if there are a lot of people in the chat room. However, there are things you can do to help find your friend online.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Find a username in the chat room that you know your friend uses. Ideally, your friend will have also told you that he uses that name in the chat room, or that it's a name he uses almost everywhere on the Internet.

2. Search for your friend's hostmask or ISP. This is only possible in chat rooms that allow you to examine hostmasks, such as an IRC chat room. To do a search, you can usually type in /whois, followed by the username of the person.

3. Find your friend on another instant messenger and ask if they're inside the room, and if so, what username they have in there.

4. Ask someone you suspect is your friend in the chat room. You may want to send this message in a private chat message. Use the chat room's instructions to send a personal message to a person.

5. Use your IM client if the chat room is connected to it to determine if your friend is in the room. Some IM programs, such as Yahoo Messenger, will allow you to jump directly to the chat room your friend is in.

Tips & Warnings

• Always know ahead of time what your friend's username will be, when you can.
• Don't go asking everyone in the chat room if they are your friend. You may get reported for harassment, kicked out of the room and/or banned from the chat room as well.

Resources

• Yahoo Messenger Chat Rooms