Telegram‘s popular t.me shortlink domain is back online after being unavailable for nearly a day, restoring access to millions of links used to share public channels, groups, and user profiles.
The outage left users unable to open t.me links, although the Telegram app itself continued to function normally.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov confirmed the issue during the outage, saying that t.me links had stopped working. The .me domain registry, DomainME, later announced that the domain had been restored and said it would release a full explanation. According to the registrar, the domain had been temporarily placed on hold because of compliance with regulations enforced by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
Internet records showed that Telegram’s domain had been placed under a “serverhold” status, a registrar-level action that effectively takes a domain offline. The restriction was lifted the following day, bringing t.me links back online worldwide.
The suspension appears to have been triggered after the U.S. Treasury published new sanctions that included a Telegram t.me link associated with a sanctioned VPN provider. Reports suggest the registrar may have temporarily suspended the entire t.me domain instead of blocking only the specific sanctioned link, resulting in a widespread disruption affecting Telegram users globally.
During the outage, Telegram temporarily switched shared links to the telegram.me domain so users could continue accessing channels and groups. With the original shortlink service now restored, normal t.me links are working again.
If this article helped you, please consider supporting our work. Every small contribution keeps Abijita.com independent and running.
