Studio Press

The introduction of internet addresses in non-Roman scripts could offer fresh opportunities to cyber-criminals, experts have warned. Next year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) will for the first time accept internet domain names in non-Roman scripts. The domain name is the part of a web address that precedes the “dot”, such as timesonline. The new internationalised domain names will open up the internet as never before to users whose native language does not use the Roman alphabet. But Roman-reading users face a possible deluge of phishing and e-mail scams. To a Roman-reading eye, an e-mail containing a link to any one of these sites might appear genuine, while to a Russian-reading eye, “paypal”, for example, reads as “raural”. An e-mail link could thus lead to a clone site constructed by unscrupulous thieves, who could then use it to harvest personal and financial details, or to steal cash. This is known as “phishing”, and Russia is such a known global centre for organised online crime that it has been the subject of special talks between the governments of Russian and the United States. Among other scripts about to be allowed by Icann, Japanese and Chinese in particular pose problems. As both languages use a writing system that is based on images rather than sounds, companies such as Apple and Paypal face the problem of choosing whether to register a local site that sounds like the company name, or corresponds to its meaning. In other words, should Apple choose the Chinese character for “Apple”, or a combination of characters than sound like the word “Apple”? :source:TO.uk: