Lorea Arakistain: “The .eus domain is the tool to straighten out the digital environment in Basque”

Euskaraz irakurri: Lorea Arakistain: “.eus domeinua 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 than ever among us. In 1969, 53 years ago, the Internet was opened to the public for the first time, and at that time nobody expected that it would change the way we live so much. In 1984, 1,000 computers were connected to the Internet, and this phenomenon grew so fast 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.

Before 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 requested the .eus domain from ICANNthe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The creators of the Basque domain make a positive assessment of these last 10 years. In his words, “the .eus domain is the tool to straighten out the digital environment in Basque”. The Foundation requested the domain in 2012, but got it two years later. By 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 projects the Basque digital identity”.

The communication manager lorea arakistain In an interview with eitb.eus, he explained that, although the results achieved are good, “not only do we work on growth, but we also work hard on the product that is offered”. PuntuEUS works to ensure digital cybersecurity, that is one of its main functions.

The Foundation detects misuse 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 those that arise 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 solve the problem.

Last year PuntuEUS managed 277 risk casesand in Arakistain’s words most of the time “were able to prevent them”.

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

In addition, the Internet increased its presence in our daily lives and the elderly suffered severely from the consequences. For this reason, this year’s International Internet Day will try to facilitate the access and use of digital technologies for older people.

Looking to the future, the Lehendakari of PuntuEUS affirms that they are willing to find and take new paths to achieve the objectives, but above all the challenge is to maintain, maintain and consolidate what has been achieved so far. He says that “We must guarantee digital identity on the Internet, create and activate community, from Basque”.

Presence of Basque on the Internet

Arakistain affirms 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 show visibility and usefulness to the language.”