Internationalized Domain Names

After several years of discussion, ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has just approved the IDN ccTLD (country code Top Level International Domain Names) Fast Track Process in the recent meeting in Korea last month. International domain names could contain localized characters instead of Latin-only representations of current domain names. According to ICANN, the act is a significant milestone in the development of Internet and “brings the first of billions more people online -- people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives", said Rod Beckstrom , ICANN CEO and President.

The movement will have great impact on the worldwide Internet. Non-English speakers, which are more than 60% of global Internet users can access Internet more easily with their recognizable URLs in local language.

A major concern (Suarez, 2009) of IDNs is that it may create potential security threats because of the inconsistency of domain names. The term homoglyph is referred to several characters or glyphs, with shapes that cannot be differentiated by quick visual inspection. Homoglyph is often used in fishing scams. A fishing website is usually created with homoglyphs to let the users believe it is the original website and to steal their credential information, such as credit card number, passwords, etc. It will be more difficult to tell if a website is fishing with multi-language domain names. For example, maybe you can recognize the difference between Paypal.com and Paypa1.com, would you think it might be the official website of Paypal France when you see the domain name Pàypàl.com?

IDNs will also make the Internet separated with unrecognizable domain names. Consider you are interested in a foreign website that you find in a handout and you need to input the domain name manually in the address bar, you may find it very difficult to input the domain name if it is not Latin letter-based, such as Chinese and Japanese. Translation tools can help you to know what the website is if it is written in a foreign language but they could not help you to access it if the domain name is “localized”. In such situation, the localized domain name is actually building a barrier to non-native speakers if no English domain name is offered. That is, if a website with local domain name has no English domain name accordingly, it seems like the website welcomes no outside visitors. Another problem is, although the domain name is using local language, Internet users still need to use Latin-based keyboards to input the localized domain names.

I’ve been mostly discussing the cons of IDNs because I see no advantage IDNs could bring to me but I have some concerns of security issues. After discussed the issue with several friends, they tell me that they feel the same way. The result draws my attention to the research principle of “triangulation”. If the research of requirement for IDNs is only conducted in US, or with people who have sufficient knowledge of English, the proposal of IDNs could never be approved because the people have no such requirement. But what about other people? If the language is the barrier for people to access Internet and the barrier to create digital divide, then methods or alternatives should be taken to bridge the gap. ICANN’s approval of IDN Fast Track Process is the first step and should be encouraged. However, the implementation of IDNs must be observed and improved through the implementing process.