Only Cyrillic letters are used in valid Russian IDN domains.
NamePros member Wot is well-respected domainer, strategically investing in IDN domains.
Stationed in Thailand, Wot has discovered and pointed out a large cache of pseudo-IDN domains, currently being offered on Sedo and other marketplaces.
According to Wot:
“They are shown as IDN but they are simply mixed script, English and other languages cobbled together, to look like real English words. Many people have been caught out by this type of worthless rubbish in the past both on Sedo and on the various forums.”
Indeed, listings for domains such as holíday.com – note the accented “i” – are mixing English with IDN characters, forming words that are not legitimate in the character set they borrow those letters from.
In other words, these domains are being sold, attempting to pose as the real thing; the all-ASCII domain holiday.com, in this example.
In the past, such silly registrations have used Cherokee letters, to form all uppercase-looking mixed IDN domains for use in spam campaigns.
For the full exchange on this serious issue, visit this thread on NamePros.
