this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Technology
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What’s with the sketchy domain name? Doesn’t really instill trust enough for me to click on let alone listen to their opinion.
ETA: TIL about punycode. Thanks all 🙏
If the domain starts with
xn-it's a telltale sign, that it's a punycode domain name. Read: it does contain characters that are not ASCII characters. This is done as domains need to be ASCII only. The format of these domains is usuallyxn--allASCIIcharacters-allNonASCIIcharactersEncoded.tld. Example:täst.comisxn--tst-qla.com.If you manually type such a domain (containing characters like äöüéèçč...), many browsers will still display what you entered, but convert the domain into punycode in the background before connecting.
You can decode the domain of this post and it results in
マリウス.com.Thats interesting! And my translation addon says it translates to "Marius"
They don't need to, but a punycode-attack is done by using a letter of another language that looks almost identical. I think you still have to actively enable the defense against it (some about:config setting), the poster did.
DNS is ASCII only and so this conversion is done. It is not needed to display the "technical" domain name that results when you enter a domain name with non ASCII chars in apps, but yes, this prevents character confusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name
TIL, thanks!
It's just a punycode domain, it ought be rendered in Japanese:
Edit: I swear those replies weren't there when I typed mine.
This is puny code, and allows for non ascii characters to be used as a domain name. Your lemmy client probably does not convert it to unicode and displays it as a random looking text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode
they even have a blog post telling you to never click domains that look like the domain of the blog :D