The global outage of the t.me domain, which Telegram uses for short links, was linked to US Treasury sanctions against the VPN service First VPN Service. This was reported by the author of the Telegram channel teleLakel, who obtained a comment from Identity Digital, the company servicing the .me domain zone.
According to Identity Digital, the t.me domain was blocked at the request of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The company added that further information for third parties could be provided by the domain registrar, GoDaddy.
On July 13, the US Treasury announced sanctions against First VPN Service (1VPNS). Among the web addresses listed in the agency’s materials was the identifier t.me/FirstVPNService. The SDN list also included the service’s administrator, Ukrainian citizen Dmytro Rashevskyi.
The Treasury’s press release says that First VPN Service’s main clients were cybercriminals and organizations spreading ransomware. According to the US authorities, Rashevskyi promoted the service by claiming he did not cooperate with law enforcement, while infrastructure for the project was allegedly purchased under false names.
The CyberSec Guru wrote that the t.me domain itself is not under OFAC sanctions and that the restrictions were likely applied by mistake. According to that account, blocking only the address t.me/FirstVPNService would have been impossible without Telegram’s cooperation, so the operator apparently executed the request formally and restricted the entire domain.
The t.me domain stopped opening worldwide on July 13, causing such links to fail in browsers. At the same time, the telegram.me domain remained accessible. In the second half of July 14, many media outlets reported that t.me had become available again.