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Mozilla Drops Support for International Domains

Posted by Zonk on from the that-was-easy dept.

tsu doh nimh writes "Netcraft has the story that Mozilla has decided to drop support for international domain names in future versions of its Firefox Web browser. The decision comes after demonstrations by the Schmoo Group that the feature can be used to aid in phishing scams and other browser naughtiness." From the article: "The attack can be disabled in Firefox and Mozilla by setting 'network.enableIDN' to false in the browser's configuration (enter about:config in the address bar to access the configuration functions). The Mozilla development team today made this the default setting. Users who want IDN support will be able to turn it on, but will be warned about the risks involved."

6 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. RTF...what? by Otter · · Score: 0, Redundant

    They're not dropping support for it, they're going to stop enabling it by default. It says that in the text you quoted, for crying out loud!

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  2. Sensationalism, Anyone? by paenguin · · Score: 0, Redundant

    How does "Turned Off by Default" get to be equal to "Drops Support"?

    A leaf falls from a tree and the next thing you know, the sky is falling.

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  3. Ummm... No by maggeth · · Score: 0, Redundant

    IDN will be disabled by default in the upcoming releases from this current trunk freeze (Firefox 1.0.1, Thunderbird 1.0.1, Mozilla 1.7.6) but it has been explicitly said many times if you bothered to look on planet.mozilla.org that a permanent solution for this problem is upcoming and hopefully will make it into Firefox 1.1. Users will be able to change this setting (with an extention and a warning dialog that explains the situation) and this should be included with most of the internationalized builds.

    Saying that Mozilla has dropped support for IDN is completely wrong.

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  4. That's International_ized_ Domain Names by braney · · Score: 0, Redundant

    There is a difference. They're not disabling something.ch, foobar.uk, etc. but addresses with unicode characters in them.

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  5. so if its off what happens exactly? by AviLazar · · Score: 0, Redundant

    If I want to visit a website in the UK (that has a .uk domain) and this feature is turned off, will FF not go there?

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  6. Re:Drops? by null+etc. · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Mod this post up.