Editing Internationalized Resource Identifier (section)

== Disadvantages ==
Mixing IRIs and [[ASCII]] [[uniform resource identifier|URIs]] can make it much easier to execute [[phishing]] attacks that trick someone into believing they are on a different site than they really are. For example, one can replace an ASCII "a" in <code>www.myfictionalbank.com</code> with the Unicode look-alike "[[α]]" to give <code>www.myfictionαlbank.com</code> and point that IRI to a malicious site. This is known as an [[IDN homograph attack]].

While a URI does not provide people with a way to specify web resources using their own alphabets, an IRI does not make clear how web resources can be accessed with keyboards that are not capable of generating the requisite internationalized characters. This means that IRIs are now handled in a way very similar to many other software which might require the use of a non-keyboard [[input method]] when dealing with texts in various languages.