“the .eus domain is the ultimate tool to put the digital environment in Basque in order”

Euskaraz irakurri: Lorea Arakistain: “.eus domainua euskarazko ingurune digitala zuzentzeko tresna da”

May 17 is celebrated international internet day, and it seems that now, after the pandemic, it is more present among us than ever. In 1969, 53 years ago, the Internet was first opened to the public, and no one expected it to change the way we live. In 1984, 1,000 computers were connected to the Internet and this phenomenon grew so rapidly that five years later 100,000 computers had access to the Internet.

Today we use social networks and applications to communicate (for example Facebook and WhatsApp), and through them we have built our social and digital life.

For the great monster that is the Internet, our identity and language have made their way. On Internet Day, the PuntuEUS Foundation celebrates that ten years ago they applied for the .eus domain from ICANNthe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The creators of the Basque domain have positively assessed these last 10 years. In his words: “the .eus domain is the tool to put the digital environment in Basque in order”. The Foundation applied for the domain in 2012, but got it two years later. In January 2016, 5,000 web pages were registered and today Puntueus has already registered 13,000 domains. Iñaki Goirizelaia, President of the Foundation, pointed out that “PuntuEUS has established itself as a brand that exudes the Basque digital identity”.

The communication manager Lorea Arakistain In an interview with eitb.eus, he explains that while the results achieved are good, “we are not only working on growth, but also working hard on the product on offer”. PuntuEUS works to ensure digital cybersecurity, which is one of its most important functions.

The Foundation detects abuse of websites under the .eus domain and works with a risk and threat prevention system. They have two types of risks, malicious domains and compromised domains.

Malicious domains are domains that are created with malicious intent, that is, they have the .eus domain but not to use it legitimately. The Foundation detects and blocks these malicious domains.

As for compromised domains, when a website is attacked, the Foundation contacts those responsible for the website and tries to resolve the issue.

Last year PuntuEUS managed 277 high-risk casesand in the words of Arakistain usually “were able to prevent them”.

During the pandemic, the internet became an essential tool for the various procedures and even to make an appointment with the doctor. The pandemic brought about a digital transformation that has become the biggest challenge for PuntuEUS today.

In addition, the internet has increased its presence in our daily lives and the elderly have suffered greatly from the consequences. Therefore, this year’s International Internet Day will seek to facilitate access to and use of digital technologies for the elderly.

Looking to the future, PuntuEUS’s Lehendakari confirm that they are willing to find and break new ground to achieve the objectives, but above all the challenge is to preserve, preserve and consolidate what has been achieved so far. What do you say “We must guarantee digital identity on the Internet, create and activate community, from Basque”.

Presence of Basque on the Internet

Arakistain confirms that the .eus domain is a digital part of our Basque identity and encourages the use of Basque. 16% of websites in Euskal Herria currently offer content in Basque. However, this figure is much higher on web pages that use the .eus domain. In fact, 84% have content in Basque, but many are multilingual; only 1.3% of the content is in Basque According to her, “.eus is a domain that serves to demonstrate the visibility and usability of the language.”