The annual report on the results of a study of the Cyrillic e-mail addresses support by the Russian Federation socially significant information resources has been published. The study is conducted by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and its “Поддерживаю.РФ” project since 2021.
In 2022, 243 websites from the list of socially significant resources approved by the Russian Ministry of Digital Development were tested. Forms of interaction with users (forms of registration, feedback, subscription to news) were checked for the possibility of entering a set of test Cyrillic email addresses without errors (acceptance) and subsequent delivery of letters to mailboxes of test email addresses (confirmation) during testing on the websites.
“The study is being conducted for the second year in a row to assess the readiness of official websites of socially significant resources to work with email addresses containing Russian alphabet characters before the @, and domain names registered in the national domain zone of the Russian Federation, in particular, in the Cyrillic ccTLD .РФ. This year, we also studied the dynamics of changes in the Cyrillic mail’s support level,” explained Maria Kolesnikova, project manager for “Поддерживаю.РФ”.
According to the study, about half of the resources (113 or 47%) successfully accept e-mail addresses with a Cyrillic domain name and a local part in Latin like ascii@юникод.юникод. At the same time, 52 (21%) and 38 (16%) resources, demonstrated the successful acceptance of e-mail addresses with a Cyrillic local part like юникод@ascii.ascii and юникод@юникод.юникод, respectively. Successful validation shows fewer resources: 59 or 24% for ascii@юникод.юникод addresses, 7 (3%) for юникод@ascii.ascii, and 4 (2%) for юникод@юникод.юникод.
All types of Cyrillic email addresses are fully supported only by 4 websites or 2% of socially significant resources: the LiveJournal blog platform, the woman.ru website, the Netology online university and the “Vokrug Sveta” magazine website.
It should be noted that the level of confirmation of email addresses with a Cyrillic domain name and Latin characters in the local part like ascii@юникод.юникод increased by 26%. The confirmation level of fully Cyrillic addresses юникод@юникод.юникод remained at the same level of 2%. At the same time, the acceptance level of all types of e-mail addresses with Cyrillic characters on the websites of socially significant resources has decreased.
“Over the past year, we have seen positive dynamics only in terms of supporting email addresses with Cyrillic .РФ domain names and Latin characters before @, although in this case, at the technical level, work is carried out, in fact, with the usual “Latin” e-mail. There is a technical possibility for Cyrillic domains of converting to Latin. This is so-called Punycode algorithm, but there is no such mechanism for the local part of the e-mail address. But still, the most important step in the development of Cyrillic mail should be the implementation of full-fledged support for e-mail addresses consisting entirely of characters of the Russian alphabet,” commented Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center.
The full text of the report on the results of the study is available on the website of the Coordination Center.
