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Complaints About Unfairness

The Ombuds Office is an independent, impartial, and confidential mechanism that looks into complaints about unfairness or harassment. This page explains how the Office handles Complaints About Unfairness. If you have a complaint about harassment, please visit this page.

How can I make a Complaint About Unfairness?

You can submit a complaint to the Ombuds Office in two ways:

  • In writing – by email
  • By speaking with the Ombuds in person, over the phone, or in video call

Please visit this page for ways to Contact the Ombuds Office.

When you contact the Ombuds Office please clearly say that you want to make a complaint. You will need to provide:

  • The date(s) the incident or issue happened
  • Who you feel treated you unfairly (the "respondent/s")
  • A description of what happened and any rules (standards, policy, process) that you think were not followed
  • A summary of any contact you have already had with the other person/s and any attempts to resolve the issue
  • How the issue has affected you
  • What you want to happen to make things right
  • How you believe the Ombuds Office can help

Why might the Ombuds Office decline to accept a complaint?

The Ombuds Office may decline to take on a case if:

  • Too much time has passed since the issue happened
  • The issue does not affect the complainant directly
  • The complainant is using an alternative process that would adequately address the complaint
  • The complaint is repeated, not serious, intended to be abusive, or not made in good faith
  • The complaint lacks credibility
  • Action by the Ombuds Office is not necessary or possible to resolve the issue
Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."