miji.beInternationalized Domain Names (IDNs) allow domain names to contain characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, or Japanese. IDNs use Punycode encoding to represent Unicode characters within the ASCII-compatible DNS system. An IDN like 例え.jp is encoded as xn--r8jz45g.jp in DNS. Browsers resolve the Punycode version; Chrome and Firefox display the Unicode form only when a label passes their display rules, and show Punycode otherwise (per the Chromium and Mozilla documentation as of October 2026). This creates potential for homograph attacks where visually similar characters from different scripts impersonate legitimate domains. URL shortening services deal with IDNs in two places: as destination URLs, and as custom short domains. Measures on the service side include validating IDN destinations against homograph attacks and displaying IDNs clearly in link previews.
Internationalized Domain Name
A domain name containing non-ASCII characters (Japanese, Arabic, etc.). Internally converted via Punycode but carries homograph attack risks.
Oct 31, 2026 / About 1 min read
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Related Terms
Hreflang
An HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and regional version of a page to show to users in different locations.
International SEO
The practice of optimizing a website so that search engines can identify which countries and languages the content targets.
Homograph Attack
A phishing technique that uses visually similar Unicode characters to impersonate a legitimate domain. Extremely difficult to detect by eye.
DNS Resolution
The process of translating a human-readable domain name into the IP address of the server hosting the website.
Percent-Encoding
A mechanism for encoding special characters in URLs by replacing them with a percent sign followed by hexadecimal digits.
Subdomain
A prefix added before the main domain name, used to organize different sections or services of a website.
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