U.S. Treasury sanctions on a VPN service knocked out Telegram's shortlink domain

2 hours ago

U.S. Treasury sanctions on a VPN provider caused a global outage of Telegram's t.me domain on July 14.
The domain was blocked at OFAC's request by its registrar due to a listed VPN service, t.me/FirstVPNService, used by cybercriminals.
The blockage likely occurred by mistake, as only the specific channel should have been targeted, but the entire domain was affected.
Telegram's telegram.me domain remained functional during the outage, and t.me was restored by the afternoon of July 14.

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