Telegram uses the short chain domain name t.me to return to service after about a day of rest. According to DomainME, the domain name was previously suspended by the United States Treasury Office of Overseas Assets Control (OFAC) compliance requirements and subsequently returned to normal.
Domain name once suspended
The Telegram founder Pavel Durov said on Monday on X platform that the t.me link "has stopped working." Subsequently, DomainME, which is responsible for.me top level domain name management, confirmed that the t.me domain name had been placed in “on hold”.
Public network records indicate that the domain name had previously appeared as a “serverhold”. This usually means that the register locks on domain names, and the relevant website or jump service is also offline. By early Tuesday, the state had been lifted.
OFAC Compliance is a direct cause
In its response, DomainME states that the t.me domain name “was suspended due to OFAC compliance” has now been restored. OFAC is part of the United States Treasury Department and is responsible for implementing United States economic sanctions.
TechCrunch, citing technologist Jonah Aragon ' s observation, states that the time point at which t.me was suspended was the same as that day when the United States Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a VPN service provider named First VPN. According to the United States, the service had been used by cybercriminals to launch extortion software attacks.
The sanctions link spreads over the entire platform's short chain.
The Ministry of Finance's sanctions list, published on Monday, contains a complete link to the First VPN Open Telegram group, which uses the t.me short-chain domain name.
The report mentioned that it was more likely that the registered party had suspended the entire t.me domain directly in order to meet the new sanctions requirements, rather than limiting only the single page address mentioned in the sanctions document. This has led to the collapse of a large number of Telegram short links.
United States companies may face high fines if they fail to comply with sanctions. At the same time, it was noted that Telegram used another domain name, Telegram.me, which did not appear in the sanctions documents, remained regularly accessible during the events.