[dns-operations] The strange case of fox.com

[Richard Clayton]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In message <Pine.LNX.4.53.1603040818340.14955 at flame.m3047.net>, Fred
Morris <m3047 at m3047.net> writes

>I can't register i-<heart>-sushi.com either. Well actually the punycode
>version, with a heart. Because although there's a unicode symbol, it's not
>part of any language collating sequence or something. Something about
>hostnames. But the DNS RFCs allow "any octet" in a label.
>
>But you have the same option I do: you could set up your misconfigured
>zone under a domain you registered, just like I can set up a label like
>that under m3047.com... if I want to.

You may find that if you do that, then you increasingly cannot use that
hostname in email header fields or in URLs carried in email:

see the recently published M3AAWG BCP

<https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/m3aawg-unicode-best-
practices-2016-02.pdf>

At present such usage is rare -- but since use of non-heart-shaped
characters that resemble the standard ASCII glyphs can lead to
considerable confusion (intentional confusion if you're a criminal) the
view of the large mail handling platforms is that it is Best Practice
not to allow mixtures of character sets  (see the document for the all
considerable detail which my this paragraph has elided)

- -- 
richard                                                  Richard Clayton

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a        Benjamin
little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.    Franklin

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1

iQA/AwUBVtx4RTu8z1Kouez7EQJZUgCgs7E3UJWUUZEXIDLrjLjPeFRuS0gAn397
cikelaHEEb6+utIR+VBRyrVS
=rrPZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----