Plans to fast-track the introduction of non-English characters in website domain names could “break the whole internet”, warns ICANN chief executive [Australian born] Paul Twomey.

Although it is reasonable for non-English speaking cultures to want to have domain names in their own language, it could be disastrous. Too many characters look the same, and fake sites would abound. Currently there are 37 characters that are allowed to be used in domain names, but this number could rise to over 50,000 if non-English letters are allowed.

My suggested solution: non-English domain names should be categorised as such in the DNS, and browsers should show a little flag to indicate when you have visited a site using non-English characters. A similar solution for links in emails, and email reply-to addresses might be harder to implement…