On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 11:38 AM, tedd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 1:38 PM +0200 8/30/08, Per Jessen wrote:
>>
>> Interesting - I copy-pasted the Rx symbol (from your webpage) into FF
>> and appended .com - and FF converted the URL symbol to "xn--u2g.com".
>>
>> I guess FF only works with a limited subset of the many possible special
>> characters.
>
> What is happening there is FF and other browsers are afraid of homographic
> attacks.
>
> A homographic attack is simply where the URL in the browser *looks* like
> another, but is not.
>
> For example, early on in this "How do we solve the 7-bit problem?" with the
> net, it was brought up that there are many code points in the Unicode
> database that look exactly the same as others.
>
> One individual (I can't remember his name at the moment) took the liberty of
> registering a domain name (i.e., PayPal.com) that use an "a" from different
> charset than English.
>
> While there was no intent to defraud anyone, PayPal wasn't amused and
> legislation followed -- the specifics of which I have no information.
>
> But the entire process demonstrated that evil-doers could register domains
> that look like other domains and thus fool people.
>
> What some browser developers did was to NOT make the conversion from
> PUNYCODE to the correct code-points but rather show the PUNYCODE "as-is",
> which was never the intent of the IDNS WG. This act defeated the entire
> process of allowing non-English people to have non-English domain names.
> This like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
>
> I claim that the process can be solved differently and more effectively. All
> browser developers have to do is to evaluate the PUNYCODE string and if it's
> made up from a collection of different charsets, then just color it.
>
> I think making the URL RED would be a better warning than showing PUNYCODE
> -- but that's my opinion.
>
> Cheers,
>
> tedd

Wait a minute - you're going to rail on for ever on another thread
about web in-accessibility with CAPTCHA and then you're going to
propose something that relies on color coding for something that
important? What about all those with red/green color blindness?

Andrew

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