EURid, the .eu registry, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ICANN to strengthen collaboration between the two organisations supporting Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) and promoting the Universal Acceptance (UA) of all domain names and email addresses.
Over $148,000 has been donated to LGBTQ Community Beneficiaries GLAAD and CenterLink from .gay domain name registration revenue, according to the .gay Impact Report released this week. The registry, Top Level Design, donates 20% of all .gay registration revenue to the LGBTQ organisations.
ICANN is seeking speakers for their next (virtual) for their pre-ICANN72 ccTLD News Sessions on 6 and 7 October. ccTLDs with a best practice, project solution or case study to share with the broader community or even a market development, or perhaps legal or operational news that is engaging, relevant and informative to other ccTLDs from across the world are requested to put their hands up and nominate themselves.
[news release] The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Team on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) welcomes anyone to join as a participant or an observer.
INRegistry is offering free .in Internationalised Domain Names in any of the 22 official Indian languages whenever a .in domain name is registered. Registrants will also get a free email address in the local language.
ICANN Tuesday announced the successful completion of String Evaluation of the proposed Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country code top-level domain (ccTLD) string for Israel.
ICANN today [5 Feb] announced the release of the Recommendations for Managing Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Variant Top-Level Domains (TLDs) as a collection of six documents. These recommendations have been developed by the ICANN organization with community feedback received during the Public Comment period.
While the Internet community has often expressed a need for IDN variant TLDs, appropriate technical details and procedures have not been in place to support these. The ICANN Board resolved on 25 September 2010 that “no variants of gTLDs will be delegated … until appropriate variant management solutions are developed.” Subsequent work by the ICANN org and the community on the analysis of issues for Arabic [PDF, 1.06 MB], Chinese [PDF, 2.86 MB], Cyrillic [PDF, 1 MB], Devanagari [PDF, 461 KB], Greek [PDF, 354 KB], and Latin [PDF, 425 KB] scripts in 2011, integrated in the Integrated Issues Report (IIR) [PDF, 2.14 MB] (2012), identified two challenges: (i) there is no accepted definition for variant TLDs, and (ii) there is no ‘variant management’ mechanism for TLDs.
For the first issue, the Root Zone Label Generation Rules (RZ-LGR) Procedure [PDF, 1.39 MB] was developed with the support of the community and adopted by the ICANN Board on 11 April 2013 for implementation. The Procedure has been implemented and RZ-LGR has been developed for six scripts, while other scripts are being added as their proposals are finalized by the relevant script communities. This enables a transparent and predictable mechanism for identification of variant labels going forward.
For the second issue, the ICANN org has undertaken a detailed examination to develop a set of recommendations on variant management mechanisms for TLDs, which have been finalized based on the community input. The recommendations, in summary, include the following:
These recommendations and associated analysis in the six documents will be presented for further consideration to the ICANN Board, anticipated in March 2019.
ICANN‘s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address â a name or a number â into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2019-02-05-en
The Public Interest Registry (PIR), who operates a number of gTLDs including .org, ngo and .ong and associated internationalised domain names, has begun accepting nominations for their Board of Directors.
In 2019 there are three positions opening on the PIR Board. The three directors will serve a 3-year term that begins mid-year 2019 and expires mid-year 2022. PIR says prior board experience is preferred. All directors must be able to read and understand a balance sheet, as well as read and communicate effectively in the English language.
There are approximately 15 full days per year for face-to-face meetings (not including travel time), regular conference calls (generally monthly), and daily email correspondence. Directors that participate in all meetings are eligible to accept compensation up to US$12,000 per year
The deadline for nominations is 15:00 UTC on February 4, 2019. Interested candidates should submit this form. More information is available here.
Unwitting mobile internet users are becoming the victims of an ongoing internationalised domain name (IDN) homograph-based phishing campaign. The suspected phishing websites purport to be those of commercial airline carriers, including Delta, RyanAir and EasyJet, and are offering free tickets, but, instead, appear to subject the user to a bait-and-switch scam according to research from Farsight Security.
The suspected phishing websites present the user with the promise of free airline tickets if they answer four innocuous questions (the responses don't seem to matter) Farsight report. Once the user answers the questions, they’re instructed to share the “offer” with 15 WhatsApp contacts before being redirected to another URL where presumably the user is prompted to enter credit card details.
As Farsight observed, the domain names for the suspected phishing sites are IDN homographs (lookalikes of well-known sites that switch out certain Basic Latin characters for homoglyph characters from similar scripts). They presented as being sourced from Delta Airlines, EasyJet and RyanAir
Farsight note that those familiar with current and recent phishing campaigns will recognise that this campaign appears to be a fork of the recent “Free Adidas” phishing campaign. This particular campaign underscored how easily a brand on the Internet can be used fraudulently and one campaign can be repurposed to attack a different and unrelated sector.
In an effort to make the pages seem more legitimate and familiar, they all include a Facebook-like section where it is made to appear as though a number of users have liked or loved the “post” along with a handful of positive comments.
It will soon be possible to register domain names in all 22 of Indiaâs scheduled languages, including 9 Indian scripts.
âWork is on for nine Indian scripts â Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu. These scripts are expected to cover many different local languages,â ICANN India head Samiran Gupta told PTI.
Currently just over half (52%) of the worldâs population has access to the internet. One of the means of bridging the digital divide is to enable domain names in as many language scripts, known as internationalised domain names, as possible around the world to allow internet users to type in and read internet addresses in their own languages.
âMany of the remaining 48% are non-English speaking people and those who do not have the ability to type in English. The work will allow domain names to be available for these people in their languages,â the ICANN India head said in the PTI article.
There is currently a community-based panel in India to allow the domain names in regional languages, which in turn would enable the system to publish local language content being searched.
âThis work for defining rules for the domain names for languages spoken in India is underway with a dedicated community based panel,â Gupta said.
According to PTI, the Neo-Brahmi Generation Panel, as it is called, consists of more than 60 technical experts and linguists from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Singapore, where these languages and scripts are used, Gupta said.
The proposals for six scripts â Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Oriya and Telugu â are already released for public comment. âOne can review these proposals and provide comments by visiting icann.org/idn,â he said. Currently there are 4.2 billion Internet users globally which may rise to 5 billion by 2022, Gupta said.
For more information on internationalised domain names, see
https://uasg.tech/