[UA-discuss] interesting to note about emoji in mailbox name.

[Larry Masinter]

What is missing is writing an actual statement that extracts from the useful statements posted here bye various people a single statement that squarely addresses the issue in the framework of email addresses and that could be the formal position of UASG on why or to what degree emoji fall outside the universal acceptance scope.

BTW, the argument made by some people here that they represent an "inferior form" (my term) of communication compared to natural languages is rather weak and I prefer not to rely on it.

The reason for avoiding emoji with color variants is that they are easily confusable. The same reasoning applies equally to mailbox names, domain names, and short URLs.

 

By string I mean a sequence of Unicode code points. There are many reasons why two different strings might, when rendered, look identical or be difficult to distinguish (pointer-to-list)

 

A simple measure of confusability for a  string is the degree to which the process of attempting to transcribe a rendering of the sequence would result in a different sequence. Transcription involves recognizing the rendering of the string and being able to enter it.    Those requesting names or issuing them, whether DNS names or mailbox names, SHOULD avoid names that are significantly confusable by a significant population, including strings that represent multiple scripts, emoji, or are unnormalized.  Applications using IDNs such as email servers, web browsers etc. MAY flag e mail or URLs using such names as potentially malicious.

 

Perhaps some kinds of emoji are unambiguous and easily entered by most and the guidance should change.

 

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https://LarryMasinter.net

 

 

 

 

 

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