Re: nameprep2 and the slash homograph issue

John C Klensin <[email protected]> wrote:

> If we find a need to start banning characters that we could not agree
> on banning the first time around, there is another approach, also
> unpleasant but IMO less problematic, that could be considered.  Just
> as RFC 2822 moved past a lot of legacy nonsense by having two separate
> "create" and "accept" syntaxes, we could define an additional profile,
> say "NameRegisterPrep".  It would look a lot like Nameprep but would
> ban the characters you are now suggesting banning, plus, based on what
> I think is growing experience in the registries, ban any character
> that mapped to anything else.
>
> The lookup process would remain the same, with no changes to Nameprep
> being made at all.

But browser implementers want to protect their users today against
malicious names that may exist in the DNS today.  I don't see how
this proposal would help them do that.  Browser implementors are
comtemplating banning characters in IDNs the browser (that is, failing
to look up names containing blacklisted characters), and I was trying
to think of a less drastic, less blatantly nonconformant, but equally
protective measure that could be taken in the browser.

AMC