The domain used by messaging app Telegram mysteriously went offline on Monday, with app founder Pavel Durov saying in an X post: t.me The link “stopped working.”
Due to the outage, users t.me Domain shortened links used in messaging apps to allow users to share a one-click link to join public groups.
The domain is now back online, according to DomainME, the Montenegro-based domain registrar that manages the domain. .me Top-level domain.
“that t.me Your domain is back online. We will make an official statement soon,” DomainME CEO Predrag Lešić said in an email to TechCrunch.
In X’s post in response to Durov, DomainME said that Telegram’s t.me The domain was “on hold due to OFAC compliance, but is now back online.” OFAC stands for the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which imposes economic sanctions on foreign companies and individuals that pose economic and national security risks to the United States.
Telegram’s t.me The domain went offline after a “serverhold” block was applied to it. A “server hold” usually means that the domain registrar has locked the domain for some reason, which tends to cause the domain to go offline. The “server hold” was lifted early Tuesday, according to the site’s public Internet records.
As tech expert Jonah Aragon points out, the domain was suspended the day the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on a VPN provider called First VPN. Authorities say the VPN provider was used by cybercriminals to launch ransomware attacks. U.S. authorities shut down the site earlier this year.
The Treasury Department’s sanctions list against First VPN, released on Monday, includes a link to the VPN provider’s public group’s full Telegram web address. t.me domain.
It’s likely that your domain registrar has suspended Telegram’s entire service. t.me Instead of restricting specific web addresses that link to Telegram groups on the Treasury Department’s sanctions list, the domain will be used to comply with the new sanctions.
U.S. companies, including domain registrars, that do not comply with U.S. sanctions laws may be subject to heavy fines.
Another domain used by Telegram is telegram.meIt is not listed in the sanctions file and was operational at the time of writing.
A Telegram spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
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