The results of a study on support for Cyrillic email addresses by the most popular information resources in Russia have been published. The study was conducted by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ as part of the implementation of the “Поддерживаю.РФ” project. It is aimed at studying the readiness of popular websites to work correctly with various types of Cyrillic e-mail addresses: those containing Unicode Cyrillic characters in the local part of the address (before the @) and/or Cyrillic domain names of the Russian national domain zone (after the @).
In 2023, the 300 most visited websites by Russian Internet users (the population of the entire country aged 12+ years) were checked via desktop and mobile devices. The list of resources for the study was compiled based on data from Mediascope's Cross Web project.
91 resources were chosen for the study that, at the time of examination, featured one or more functional user interaction forms that let you enter email addresses (registration form, feedback form, news subscription form, etc.). The selected resources were checked for the ability to enter Cyrillic e-mail addresses into interaction forms without errors (acceptance) and subsequent delivery of letters to their mailboxes (confirmation).
According to the results of the study, the level of acceptance by resources of fully or partially Cyrillic e-mail addresses, demonstrating the correct operation of the website’s input forms, was:
- 44% of resources successfully accept e-mail addresses with Latin characters in the local part of the address and a Cyrillic domain name (ascii@юникод.юникод type););
- 34% of resources successfully accept e-mail addresses with a Cyrillic local part and a domain name in Latin (юникод@ascii.ascii type););
- 29% of resources successfully accept fully Cyrillic e-mail addresses (юникод@юникод.юникод type).);
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The level of confirmation of fully or partially Cyrillic e-mail addresses, demonstrating the correct operation of the mail services of the sites being checked, was:
- more than a third, or 37% of resources successfully send letters to e-mail addresses with Latin characters in the local part and a Cyrillic domain name (ascii@юникод.юникод type););
- 3% of resources successfully send letters to email addresses with a Cyrillic local part and a domain name in Latin (юникод@ascii.ascii););
- another 3% of resources ensure correct work with all types of Cyrillic e-mail addresses: they successfully receive and successfully send confirmations to such addresses, including fully Cyrillic e-mail addresses (юникод@юникод.юникод type). более трети, или 37% ресурсов успешно отправляют письма на e-mail адреса с латинскими символами в локальной часть и кириллическим доменным именем (вида ascii@юникод.юникод);
- 3% ресурсов успешно отправляют письма на email-адреса с кириллической локальной частью и доменным именем на латинице (вида юникод@ascii.ascii);
- еще 3% ресурсов обеспечивают корректную работу со всеми видами кириллических e-mail адресов: успешно принимают и успешно отправляют подтверждения на такие адреса, включая полностью кириллические почтовые адреса (вида юникод@юникод.юникод).
«We conducted a study to assess the current capabilities of Internet users to interact with popular sites using Cyrillic e-mail addresses. This is important for those users who already have Cyrillic e-mail addresses and those who plan to create them after registering a Cyrillic domain name, primarily in the Russian national domain zone. Let me remind you that users can register Cyrillic second-level domain names in such Russian zones as .РФ, .ДЕТИ, .МОСКВА, .РУС and .SU. Therefore, when developing websites today, it is important not to forget and ensure correct work with all available types of e-mail addresses, including fully or partially Cyrillic ones,», — Maria Kolesnikova, Head of the Поддерживаю.РФ project, said.
The study notes that the main difficulty in supporting Cyrillic e-mail addresses by sites is the correct configuration of work with Cyrillic characters in the local part of the address in accordance with the EAI standard (RFC 6530-6533), and also that not all sites implement correct work with Cyrillic domain names, despite the possibility of using the Punycode conversion algorithm (RFC 3492).
The full text of the study is published on the website of the Coordination Center.
