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Contact the Ombuds Office

How to contact the Ombuds Office

You can contact the Ombuds Office anytime. You can contact the Office in English, French, or Spanish.

Email the Office or the Ombuds directly to

  • Ask a question
  • Raise a concern
  • Make a complaint
  • Request a Zoom meeting for a confidential, informal conversation

The Ombuds Office: [email protected]

The Ombuds: [email protected]

You can also meet the Ombuds at ICANN Public Meetings. Drop by the Ombuds Office at the meeting venue – there is no need to schedule an appointment.

If you are unsure who to contact about your issue, you can contact ICANN Global Support. They will know if ICANN is able to handle your specific issue. If ICANN cannot help, they will try to suggest other ways for your to get support or answers.

How quickly can I expect a reply from the Ombuds Office?

The Ombuds Office recognizes the importance of dealing with all cases promptly and aims to handle every case as quickly as possible. You should expect to receive a message confirming that we have received your written request or complaint in two to five working days.If you asked for a meeting, we aim to have it scheduled within five to seven working days.

Some issues are complex and will take longer than the time limits listed below to handle fairly. Many matters will be dealt with in a shorter timescale.

The Office may keep cases collaborative conflict resolution cases open for longer to allow the people involved to request further support as needed.

The Ombuds Office commits to keeping everyone involved in a case updated on its progress, including if there are any delays to the standard timelines. You should expect weekly or bi-weekly updates.

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."