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RIF 2021: A turn of eras

The 25th Russian Internet Forum RIF 2021 opened at the Lesnye Dali hotel outside Moscow on May 20, with the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ traditionally involved as a participant and a partner.

Director of the Coordination Center Andrey Vorobyev spoke at the official opening ceremony. In his remarks at the analytical panel discussion, The Runet Today: Figures and Trends, he highlighted the 2020 results and the development trends on the Russian domain market.

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the Coordination Center has been monitoring the so-called corona-domains and ensuring user safety, protecting them from phishing and other malicious activity, with support from competent organizations, Andrey Vorobyev noted. “The pandemic year has exacerbated all existing problems – in particular, there has been an increase in the number of instances of illegal use of domain names. In 2020, we recorded almost 6,000 coronavirus-related domains; such registrations continued into this year, and the number of phishing attacks is also on the rise. This means that fighting phishing and online fraud is a common concern of the IT industry, legislators, law enforcement officers, and society,” the Coordination Center director said.

“Another important job for us is to support the Russian language in the internet landscape. The Coordination Center is making a significant contribution to the global industry in promoting IDNs, but our efforts require the support of IT developers. To make this happen, we have launched the Поддерживаю.рф (which stands for I Support) website, which helps ensure that all products on the Runet and globally work correctly with Cyrillic domains as well as with any other IDNs and email addresses,” Andrey Vorobyev added.

The opening ceremony of the forum was also attended by Alexander Khinshtein (State Duma), Mikhail Seslavinsky (USM Holdings), Alexey Goreslavsky (ANO Dialogue), Sergey Plugotarenko (RAEC), Sergey Grebennikov (ROCIT), George Held (Beeline) and other experts.

Interestingly, on the ‘zero day’ of the Russian Internet Forum on May 19, just before the official opening, representatives of the IT segment recorded a video session, The Runet Today, where they presented detailed results and trends of their industry segments. Andrey Vorobyev presented the Coordination Center’s report, Russian Domain Space 2020: Outcomes and Development Prospects, citing the most interesting figures from the report concerning the national and international internet landscape. According to Andrey Vorobyev, the pandemic year was not easy for the domain market. The global domain industry continued to grow in Q1-Q3 2020, but plummeted in Q4. Negative trends in the economy predictably reduced interest in registering new domains: the domain market grew by only 1.1% in 2020 (compared to 19% in 2019).

However, despite the difficulties, both Russian ccTLDs retained their positions. At the end of last year, .RU continued to rank 5th globally among national domains and 8th among all domain zones; .РФ kept its positions as the largest Cyrillic domain and remained in the European Top 20.

As a reminder, this year, this largest industry forum marks its 25th anniversary, while the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ turns 20. Many RIF events hosted by the Coordination Center are therefore dedicated to this anniversary. One of them is the Authorization: Show your Knowledge of the Internet Industry entertainment and educational program held on May 20-21 at the Coordination Center’s tent. Five accredited registrars talk about their services and conduct various quizzes and contests at the Coordination Center’s stand (B-1).

RIF 2021 will run until May 22. Follow our updates!

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