WebFinger
Protocol for the discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI
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. 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, which is a protocol that allows one to more easily log in to various sites on the Internet.
The WebFinger protocol is used by federated software, such as GNU social (via its use in OStatus), Diaspora, or Mastodon, to discover users on federated nodes and pods, as well as the remoteStorage protocol. The WebFinger protocol does not specify the usage of "template" within the "links" section. That is an extension made by the former oStatus protocol that the Fediverse inherited from. The reasoning for expanding upon this later was justified by wanting to use a different key for a value that isn't an URL but a pattern to create one.
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.
The protocol payload is represented in JSON format with a MIME-Type of application/jrd+json.
Technical overview
The WebFinger specification consists of a specified URI format and a minimal ontology which requires JSON resources served from that URI to declare their own additional ontologies.
Contact Information Example
The following example demonstrates a hypothetical E-mail client functionality which retrieves contact information from WebFinger-supporting servers:
Alice opens the "Add contact" page of their E-Mail client and enters Bob's E-mail Address, bob@example.com.
The application then derives the WebFinger URL:
https://example.com/.well-known/webfinger?resource=...
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “WebFinger” is protocol for the discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through WebFinger, Protocol and discovery, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “protocol for the discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7978777. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “WebFinger”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow WebFinger primary sources, WebFinger archive and WebFinger research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “WebFinger”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “WebFinger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.