Telegram’s t.me links return after sanctions hiccup

Telegram’s t.me shortlink domain is back online after going dark for about a day, an outage that blocked one-click links used to join public groups on the messaging app.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said in a post on X that t.me links had “stopped working.” On Tuesday, Montenegro-based registrar DomainME, which manages the .me top-level domain, confirmed service had been restored.

“The t.me domain is back online. We will be issuing an official statement shortly.”

In a reply to Durov on X, DomainME said Telegram’s t.me domain was “on hold due to the OFAC compliance, but it is back online now.” OFAC, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, administers economic sanctions against foreign companies and individuals deemed to pose a U.S. national security risk.

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Public internet records showed the domain had been placed under serverhold, a registrar-level status that typically takes a domain offline. That hold was lifted early on Tuesday.

According to technologist Jonah Aragon, the suspension happened the same day the U.S. Treasury sanctioned VPN provider First VPN, which authorities said had been used by cybercriminals to launch ransomware attacks. U.S. authorities shut down the site earlier this year.

The Treasury’s sanctions listing for First VPN, published Monday, included a full Telegram public-group link using the shortened t.me domain. TechCrunch noted that the registrar likely suspended Telegram’s entire t.me domain to comply with the sanctions, rather than blocking only the specific URL referenced in the filing. U.S. companies, including domain registrars, can face heavy fines for failing to follow sanctions law.

Another Telegram domain, telegram.me, was not included in the sanctions filing and remained operational at the time of writing. A spokesperson for Telegram did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.