Moldova hosted Universal Acceptance Day for the second time. The event was organized by the Internet Society Association with the support of ICANN and UNESCO.
This year’s conference focused on the practical aspects of implementing Universal Acceptance (UA). For the event, the organizers carried out a pilot project with full UA support, registering an internationalized domain name to creating a website that accepts email addresses with national language characters. The results of the project were presented to participants, who also discussed future opportunities for UA implementation and strategies for cooperation among various stakeholders to ensure a globally accessible internet.
Vadim Mikhailov, an expert from the Universal Acceptance Regional Coordination Group for CIS and Eastern Europe and an infrastructure consultant at the Coordination Center for TLDs .RU/.РФ, spoke at the event. In his presentation, Internationalization of the Domain Space: Security Aspects, Mikhailov discussed the new challenges that domain space internationalization poses for cybersecurity, DNS infrastructure resilience, and user protection. He paid particular attention to the experience of the Coordination Center and the practical approaches used by domain name registration system participants to mitigate the risks associated with expanding language support in the DNS.
The speaker noted that threats related to the visual similarity of domain and email addresses (known as homoglyph attacks) are becoming increasingly common online, including when using internationalized domain names and email addresses. He discussed how to counter these types of attacks and outlined approaches already developed for the secure use of internationalized domain names and email addresses across various professional communities and organizations.
“New technologies always bring new threats, but that is no reason to avoid them – solutions for protecting against threats related to domain and email address similarity are constantly evolving, and understanding and mastering them is becoming a must-have skill for everyone. Sharing experiences is the cornerstone of finding the best solutions,” concluded Vadim Mikhailov.
For reference, in 2025, Moldova hosted its first Universal Acceptance Day as part of the Moldovan Internet Governance Forum (MIGF 2025). Maria Kolesnikova, Chief Analyst at the Coordination Center for TLDs .RU/.РФ and Chair of the Universal Acceptance Regional Coordination Group for CIS and Eastern Europe, delivered the keynote address, The Future of Digital Inclusion: Why Universal Acceptance Matters.
