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Do you have any idea how many possibilities there are?
The letter "a" is not the only letter vulnerable to this. The letters "e o p c x y" are repeated in the Russian alphabet alone, and several others are close matches. Making domain name owners buy up all possibilities is NOT the answer. There could be hundreds, depending on the domain name, and it would be far too easy to overlook a possibility.

A better way would be to prevent the mixing of different alphabets within a single domain name. If you want to use arabic characters, then all you must use all arabic characters. If you want to use Russian characters, you must use all Russian characters. While that's not perfect (xcopy.com, for instance, could be spelled out in both languages) it's better than having to figure out all possibilities using all the multiple alphabet character sets. There really is no legitimate reason to do that, unless someone is trying to be cute. But I think we can all agree that internet safety is more important than someone trying to get cute with their domain names.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to have a default switch set in the browser preferences which prevents the use of foreign characters within the address bar. I'd think at least 99% of us would never go to a site that uses foreign characters in its domain name anyway (except for porn surfers maybe, but those people are taking enough risks as it is).
Posted by: Michael Kelly   Posted on: 02/08/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
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New bug in ALL browsers see below:  htotten | 02/07/05
How does it work?  toomuchgreeatea@... | 02/07/05
ASCII code  Michael Kelly | 02/07/05
Also...  Michael Kelly | 02/07/05
IE?  Real World | 02/07/05
I did the same thing  Michael Kelly | 02/07/05
Same result here  Bill4 | 02/07/05
not bug: some international characters look like latin characters  hipparchus2000 | 02/07/05
Do you have any idea how many possibilities there are?  Michael Kelly | 02/08/05
That won't work...  doe_z | 02/08/05
But I'm colorblind  Michael Kelly | 02/08/05
What was Helen Keller's favorite color?  Spoon Jabber | 02/08/05
Simple  Spoon Jabber | 02/08/05
Philanthropy?  Anton Philidor | 02/07/05
Explain...  doe_z | 02/07/05
The history.  Anton Philidor | 02/07/05
Wait a minute...  Michael Kelly | 02/07/05
Believe it or not...  Anton Philidor | 02/07/05
Why wouldn't they have as many people working for them?  Michael Kelly | 02/07/05
Because some people volunteer.  Anton Philidor | 02/07/05
Re: Because some people volunteer.  Michael Kelly | 02/07/05
Who cares if they volunteer?  voska | 02/07/05
Construction unions are not especially pleased...  Anton Philidor | 02/07/05
No...  doe_z | 02/07/05
anton with his flawed logic....again  AmusedAtItAll | 02/08/05
The cotton gin didn't put people out of work,...  Anton Philidor | 02/08/05
So now we're comparing open source programmers to African-American slaves  Michael Kelly | 02/08/05
Are you really that surprised?  Spoon Jabber | 02/08/05
You should read more carefully  Spoon Jabber | 02/08/05
Firefox 'secret support partner' to be revealed  Loverock Davidson | 02/07/05
I'm sure...  Michael Kelly | 02/07/05
My Score on Mac......  Macathome | 02/07/05
https doesn't mean what you think it means  NonZealot | 02/07/05
Exactly!  George Mitchell | 02/07/05
https should require a server certificate  bjbrock | 02/07/05
re:https doesn't mean what you think it means  Macathome | 02/07/05
Not bad ideas, support is good, but it sounds  bjbrock | 02/07/05

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