The imminent launch of internationalized domain names (IDNs) won’t cause an increase in spam, but is likely to deliver a spike in phishing, according to experts.

“Manish Goel, CEO of BoxSentry, noted in an e-mail that widening the use of IDNs could increase the risk of ‘IDN homograph attacks,’ where cybercriminals substitute the numeric ‘1’ for the letter ‘l,’” writes ZDNet Asia’s Vivien Yeo. “‘This may now be extended to the much wider range of homographs that exists across the Unicode character set [in different languages],’ Goel said.”

“Concurring, Commtouch’s vice president of products Asaf Greiner said certain phishing scams ‘may become more prevalent with the proliferation of IDNs,’” Yeo adds.

Click here to read the ZDNet Asia story.