Telegram's t.me short links are back online: US sanctions caused the outage

The t.me short domain, used to access popular Telegram groups and channels, has resumed operation after a one-day outage. The issue, which began on Monday, restricted users worldwide from accessing public resources with a single click. This situation caught the attention of not only users but also the service's founder, Pavel Durov. This is reported by Techcrunch.com reports .

According to DomainME, the Montenegro-based registrar managing the domain, the t.me domain was temporarily suspended not due to technical reasons, but because of legal compliance processes. In an interview with TechCrunch, DomainME CEO Predrag Leshich confirmed that the domain is back online and stated that an official statement would be released soon.

Sanctions and the "serverhold" status

It is reported that the domain outage was caused by restrictions imposed by the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Responding to Pavel Durov on X (formerly Twitter), registrar representatives explained that the domain was temporarily suspended as part of a review for compliance with OFAC requirements.

According to internet records, a "serverhold" status was applied to the Telegram domain. Usually, this status means the domain registrar has blocked the domain for specific reasons, which automatically causes the site to become inaccessible worldwide. On Tuesday morning, this restriction was lifted, and the links returned to normal.

Why was the entire domain blocked?

Experts, including technologist Jonah Aragon, believe this incident coincided with the day the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against the First VPN provider. Authorities claim that cybercriminals used this VPN service to conduct ransomware attacks. The US government had shut down the service's website earlier this year.

Interestingly, the list of sanctions announced for First VPN also included a t.me link leading to the provider's public group on Telegram. It is speculated that the domain registrar decided to temporarily freeze the entire t.me domain, rather than just a single link, to avoid potential heavy fines for non-compliance with sanctions.

For users in Uzbekistan, Telegram is also the primary tool for communication and information. The temporary outage of the t.me domain caused difficulties in accessing many local channels and business accounts via external links. Currently, all systems are working stably, and users can use short links without any restrictions.