Why do some BNS names have a warning about non-English characters?

Carole
Carole
  • Updated

When exploring BNS listings on Gamma's marketplace, you may come across BNS names that show a warning about non-English characters.

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What is an IDN homograph attack?

An International Domain Name (IDN) homograph attack is a way for a malicious party to deceive computer users, by exploiting the fact that many characters in different languages look alike (they are homoglyphs, like a capital I can look like a lowercase L, in latin languages). 

As an example, the Latin letter "a" and the Cyrillic letter "a" are almost identical, and it can be difficult for regular users to notice the difference. Same goes with the Latin letter O, the Greek one, and the Cyrillic one. 

But these examples, although very similar visually, have a technical difference: they were not assigned the same code. The incorrect or malicious use of these letters can pose a risk of security attacks.

What to look out for? 

If a BNS name has non-English characters in it, you'll see a warning. Here's an example of a non-latin letter hidden in a BNS name: compare the first and second "i", the first i's dot is missing.

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Security notice: Please be safe and exercise caution before making any purchase of any NFT with the assistance of Gamma's platform. Users are always encouraged to do their own research and only make purchases of assets they fully trust. Every transaction made on the blockchain is immutable (unable to be reversed).

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