Telegram’s t.me short-link domain inaccessible globally

Based on information from HackRead, Telegram's widely used t.me short-link domain became inaccessible worldwide after the .me registry placed it under serverHold, preventing access to links for profiles, channels, groups, bots, and individual posts. The messaging service itself remains operational for signed-in users, but the domain's DNS resolution failure renders t.me links unusable.

The .me registry applied a serverHold status to the t.me domain, a registry-level action that prevents it from being published in the Domain Name System (DNS). This means that when a device attempts to look up the domain, the DNS lookup fails, effectively cutting off access. Telegram founder Pavel Durov publicly inquired with the .me registry about the issue, but no official explanation has been provided by the registry, Telegram, or its backend operator, Identity Digital.

Some speculation online has linked the outage to a recent US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) action that listed a specific Telegram channel path associated with a VPN service. However, there is no public evidence to confirm this connection, as the OFAC notice did not sanction the t.me domain itself. The outage disrupts a key gateway for sharing Telegram content, and restoring access requires the removal of the serverHold status by the registry.

Source: HackRead