Telegram's Short Domain Has Stopped Working Worldwide

The situation came as a surprise to Pavel Durov.

Telegram’s short URL stopped working worldwide after the operator of Montenegro’s .me domain zone assigned it “serverHold” status. According to Whois, the t.me domain was removed from the DNS system on July 13.

As a result, links to channels, posts, and profiles no longer open in the browser and do not redirect users to the app. However, within Telegram itself, links in the t.me format continue to work. The messaging app has started automatically replacing them with telegram.me when they are copied.

The reasons for the restrictions are unknown. The government of Montenegro administers the country’s national domain zone, and registration services are provided by the Domain.me registry. The American companies Identity Digital and GoDaddy also participate in providing technical support for the infrastructure.

The situation came as a surprise to Telegram founder Pavel Durov. He publicly reached out to the registrar on X: “Hey, @domainME, the t.me links have stopped working. Can you check what’s going on?” However, the issue is not related to the domain’s expiration: t.me is registered through May 2035.

Users have suggested possible causes, including a technical glitch, a legal dispute, an internal audit, compliance with law enforcement requests, and a violation of the registry’s rules. Other theories include the consequences of U.S. sanctions (specifically, due to an erroneous mention of the Telegram domain in OFAC documents), as well as a political factor related to Montenegro’s EU accession process.

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