A domain used by messaging app Telegram mysteriously went offline on Monday, with the app’s founder, Pavel Durov, saying that a X post that t.me links “stopped working”.
The outage prevented users from accessing the t.me short domain link, used by the messaging application to allow users to share one-click links to join public groups.
The domain is now back online, according to Montenegro-based domain registrar DomainME, which manages the .me top-level domain.
“THE t.me The domain is online again. We will issue an official statement soon,” said Predrag Lešić, CEO of DomainME, in an email to TechCrunch.
In a post on X replying to Durov, DomainME he said this Telegram t.me The domain was “on hold due to OFAC compliance, but is back online now.” OFAC refers to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which imposes financial sanctions on overseas companies and individuals that pose economic national security risks to the United States.
Telegram t.me The domain was taken offline after a “serverhold” block was placed on the domain. A “server” typically means that the domain registrar locked the domain for some reason, which tends to make the domain offline. The serverhold was lifted early Tuesday, according to the site’s public online records.
As the technologist notes Jonah Aragonthe domain was suspended on the same day that the US Treasury imposed sanctions to a VPN provider called First VPN, which authorities said was used by cybercriminals to launch ransomware attacks. US authorities shut down the site earlier this year.
of the Ministry of Finance list of sanctions for First VPN, published on Monday, contains a link to the full web address of the VPN provider’s public Telegram group using the abbreviated t.me domain.
It is possible that the domain registrar has suspended the entire Telegram t.me domain to comply with the new sanctions, rather than restricting the specific web address associated with the Telegram group to the Treasury Department’s sanctions list.
US companies, including domain registrars, that do not comply with US sanctions laws may face heavy fines.
Another domain used by Telegram, telegram.meit was not on the sanction file and was operational at the time of writing.
A Telegram representative did not respond to a request for comment.
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