IDN is a system thanks to which domain names can contain characters of national alphabets. In the Czech Republic, it means that .cz domains may contain characters with Czech diacritics: acute accents and carons.

IDN for .cz domain

The .CZ domain administrator, CZ.NIC Association, is ready from a technical point of view for the implementation of IDN in our national domain; however, it has not implemented IDN in .cz domains yet since the Internet user community in the Czech Republic (individuals as well as organizations) has not shown much interest in the implementation of IDN. CZ.NIC Association conducts regular surveys in two-year intervals to assess the users' interest. The results of surveys from 2004 to the present are shown in the diagrams below (comprehensive results of the surveys are available here (Czech only): 2004 organizations and individuals, 2006 organizations, 2006 individuals, 2008 organizations, 2008 individuals, 2010 organizations, 2010 individuals, 2012 organizations, 2012 individuals, 2012 domain holders, 2014 organizations, 2014 individuals, 2014 domain holders, 2016 organizations, 2016 individuals, 2016 domain holders, 2019 organizations, 2019 individuals, 2019 domain holders).

Possible impacts of the implementation of IDN

Introduction of IDN is not only a simple process which will make it possible to register domains with acute accents and carons. It may have a number of negative side effects, from the linguistic point of view or in terms of protection of one's safety, which must be taken into account when considering the introduction of IDN. For your consideration…

How to write IDN address?

The basic goal of IDN is to simplify communication among users of a given language. Today, people are used to use domain names intuitively and think of the possible replacements of characters with acute accents and carons. Now, how do we enter a domain which contains foreign alphabet characters which we are not familiar with? How do we find such characters on a keyboard? Do not click on the following links and do not copy and paste them but try to write any of the following addresses manually. You will probably find out that it is not easy: öko.de, różyczka.pl, 艶やかコンパクト.com. Thus, the IDN addresses will be accessed without much difficulty by the native speakers from the given country, but a foreigner who does not know particular national alphabets will have a hard time. By the way, do you know what may happen if you mistype the address and misspell a single character?

IDN and hackers

Typo-squatting is a technology which relies on mistyped domain names. A typosquatter registers a mistyped domain of a well known domain name which is used by a great number of users, e.g. the name of a frequently used browser. At such address, they establish their own website which usually contains pornography, Viagra sales etc. Because the browser is very popular and is used by many users, even a small group of users who access the typosquatter's website as a result of a typing error may represent a fairly large number.

Let's imagine another situation which is very familiar to the Czech nation. It does not concern a browser but a bank and their Internet banking systems. In this case, a hacker launches, at the mistyped address, a webpage which looks exactly the same as the bank's webpage. The user, having made a typing error, will hardly notice that s/he has accessed a different page and will easily enter his/her user name, password, card number or other sensitive data. Thus, the hacker obtains data which s/he can (and of course is willing to) misuse.

However, there are even more kinds of computer attacks. "IDN homograph attack" is a name of a really tricky one. It is based on the interchangeability of some identical or similar characters. It means that a contradictory interpretation of such identical or similar characters may often confuse us and throw us to the “wolves” (such links are only illustrative and will do no harm to your computer if you click on them:). Let's take for example national alphabets in which IDN has already been implemented and which contain characters that are similar to those used in the Latin alphabet. Let's try to find a difference between the following pages: http://www.gооgle.cz X http://www.google.cz (watch the line where the selected address is to be typed). What is the difference? In the former case, the "?" character was not written in the Latin alphabet but in Cyrillic. We access a completely different website than we wanted to even though we clicked a link which is seemingly the right one. In addition to a great number of IDN varieties, there may also be homographs in the Latin alphabet itself. The number of potential confusions is limited by the number of duplicate characters in the Latin alphabet ("I" and "l", "O" and "0"), but they may occur. Which of the following links is incorrect at first sight? - http://www.googIe.com X http://www.google.com. Will we be careful if we go to a Google-type website even though via a link from another website? Probably not…

Need to register multiple domains

To prevent typo-squatting, you may register multiple domains. You may easily register all combinations of common domains as well as domains with diacritics. How many can there be?

Increased risk of litigations

After you have registered all possible alternatives of domains, you should get ready for the next issue which you have probably not thought of. It is paradoxical that the more domain names logically derived from your company's name you register, the more probable it is that one day there will appear somebody who will claim that only they are entitled to use such domain. E.g. because they have a trademark for some of the varieties. Then, you may be subject to litigation over who has the right to use such domain.

Instructions to test your domain

Web

Since you are at this website, you have your access to IDN address tested – because you are at http://www.háčkyčárky.cz. You can also check out the following addresses: http://háčkyčárky.cz and http://stránky.háčkyčárky.cz

E-mail

If you want to have your email tested, send a test email to testmail@háčkyčárky.cz and type “IDN“ in the subject field. If everything works well and the email reaches the destination, you will receive a response to your message (a reply to the same e-mail is sent only once a day for technical reasons).

DNS Zone file

You can also check how zone file for háčkyčárky.cz looks like.

Discussion forum

You can express your opinions in a discussion forum.

Varianty doménového jména:

Zde si můžete vyzkoušet všechny diakritické varianty libovolného doménového jména .cz: