Hacker News

by Ryan Harman

Telegram's t.me domain has been suspended (whois.com)

203 points by Tiberium 3 hours ago

sebastiennight 2 hours ago

Of course we launched our Telegram channel just this weekend, so I am feeling pretty happy that I enforced a 15-year old SOP that says "never email links to 3rd-party domains ; always use a redirect"...

Swapping the redirect now for telegram.me, which hopefully won't go down simultaneously

ars 2 hours ago

I would do something that isn't *.me, since it was them that suspended it.

walrus01 an hour ago

.is might be a choice, since archive.is continues to be available despite many legal threats

You don't have to be an Icelandic national to register a .is

pixel_popping an hour ago

lbotos an hour ago

I think you misunderstood -- OP is running op-s-domain.com/telegramchat -> redirect t.me.

They updated op-s-domain.com/telegramchat -> redirect telegram.me.

cmeacham98 an hour ago

grayhatter 2 hours ago

I appreciate the idea, I'll happily adopt your SOP, seems pretty useful

thanks

RJSquirel 2 hours ago

I can't believe they use GoDaddy as a registrar.

culi 6 minutes ago

Clue me in? Is GoDaddy particularly censorial as a registrar?

stavros a minute ago

GoDaddy is just a general clusterfuck of arbitrary decisions. I don't have anything ready offhand to point to, but the general consensus is that you should avoid GoDaddy pretty vehemently.

mplewis 4 minutes ago

they're particularly incompetent

Brushfire an hour ago

insanity. it almost undercuts everything they do.

zuzululu 13 minutes ago

i think it makes perfect sense if you understand what telegram is and which country it benefits

gruez 7 minutes ago

water-data-dude 2 hours ago

You can read an explanation of the status codes on the icann website.

The explanation for clientRenewProhibited was interesting:

"This status code tells your domain's registry to reject requests to renew your domain. It is an uncommon status that is usually enacted during legal disputes or when your domain is subject to deletion."

Similar language for some of the other statuses like serverDeleteProhibited.

https://www.icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited

ivanmontillam 2 hours ago

But if you check the domain's expiration date, it's far away in year 2035.

To the best of my knowledge, a domain can only be renewed in advance for up to 10 years.

(that could be the reason for that status).

chrisweekly 2 hours ago

(2035 is less than 10 years from now)

ivanmontillam 2 hours ago

shishcat 2 hours ago

I think they just flagged all locks in their admin portal. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/zoTQbwn

michalpleban 2 hours ago

The status that actually says the domain is suspended is serverHold.

anigbrowl 2 hours ago

Telegram is currently the target of legal/regulatory investigations by Russia (alleged extremism), France (likewise), and India (alleged facilitation of national exam leaking/cheating). I'm guessing the latter since it's the most recent and arguably has the most fiscal heft.

Also very surprised to see Telegram was reliant on GoDaddy, notorious for its lack of transparency.

ilaksh an hour ago

But Telegram hasn't engaged in that, some of their users have.

I think the issue might be that although Telegram has a lot of abuse takedown activity, they do not permit access or direct action by authorities. If I recall, they have reiterated many times that some level or types of messages always remain private.

Maybe that's the issue is that a lot of illicit activity is going on in private channels and whether or not their filtering addresses it at all, authorities see the activity and have no access for court cases or direct action against it, so they can imagine it is quite rampant.

inigyou 10 minutes ago

Telegram shields its users from such requests.

Other platforms either don't have the requested data (Signal) or willingly hand it over when they get a court order to (Facebook). When Telegram gets a court order it ignores the court order and then makes Pavel Durov hard to physically find and therefore arrest. One can only guess what motivations he has for this.

So courts seek alternative enforcement mechanisms.

anigbrowl an hour ago

I'm not making an argument about who's right or whether these disputes have any merit, I'm just trying to guess who might have had the inclination and legal resources to make this happen.

kajman an hour ago

I always figured telegram got the screws turned on them all the time because their lack of E2E encryption meant it was viable to demand they proactively police the platform in the first place. Maybe Signal would just be outright blocked in these locales if it was anywhere near as popular, though.

hnlmorg an hour ago

milkshakes an hour ago

joe_mamba an hour ago

>But Telegram hasn't engaged in that, some of their users have.

Yeah, but government workers just want a legal slam dunk to call it a day and collect the glory, and it's always easier to go after the platform where the crimes are being discussed, rather than after the individual users actually committing the crimes.

It's how government, prosecution and law enforcement jobs are incentivized.

axus an hour ago

Not every country has DMCA safe harbor for service providers. A crap sandwich may taste horrible but it has bread.

indolering an hour ago

Montenegro (.me) seems to be aligned with the EU. But I would have expected there to see a legal ruling in France before Montenegro would do this sort of thing.

I wouldn't be surprised if GoDaddy caved to request. They are known for giving up domains to anyone with a badge and a fax machine!

dylan604 an hour ago

Is the badge really that much of a requirement? I mean, if you have a fax machine, you must be a legit source to make that request.

haskman 2 hours ago

We only recently started moving the Functional Programming India community from Telegram to Zulip. That decision is looking better and better!

Imustaskforhelp 2 hours ago

Zulip is amazing. Nothing against that but what are your thoughts on fluxer and the others (recently chatto seems interesting, matrix, stoat are interesting options as well).

Also awesome initiative by the way, how did you end up making it and I'd love to know some backstory about it actually as well.

kaladin-jasnah 2 hours ago

Not the original commenter, but Matrix is awful. I used it on and off, and self-hosted it too. It's slow, bloated (I'm pretty sure I tried other homeservers). The app UI/UX is not great either. The E2EE stuff got better by the end but adoption-wise I was able to get way more people on Signal.

Imustaskforhelp 2 hours ago

markasoftware an hour ago

Its serverHold which means the .me registry took this action, not the registrar (GoDaddy).

shishcat 11 minutes ago

Curiously, GoDaddy has a 38.352% stake in .ME registry services.

namegulf 30 minutes ago

Yeah,a serverHold is placed by the Registrar.

It could be for a lot of reasons:

- spam, phishing or malware distribution

- contact verification issues

- trademark, copyright or cybersquatting legal issues

- or sometimes even errors or registrar transfer issues

It is a valuable and important domain for TG, most likely they'll resolve it soon

Krutonium 14 minutes ago

serverHold is set by the owner of the TLD, not the registrar.

shishcat 12 minutes ago

registry*

ventegus 2 hours ago

I went here for an IP to write in /etc/hosts and no one has posted it yet :(

shishcat 2 hours ago

dig +short @ns-cloud-b1.googledomains.com t.me

149.154.167.99

there you go

pKropotkin an hour ago

NEVER use godaddy!

bryant an hour ago

They're in a position to get their own TLD (e.g .tgrm - edited from .tg); they should probably do this and run their own supporting infrastructure for it at this point.

noxvilleza an hour ago

.tg is already used by Togo, although .te is not taken.

RA2lover 42 minutes ago

two-letter TLDs are reserved for country codes and not available for private use.

esseph 7 minutes ago

codedude64 3 hours ago

I don't understand I visited the whois site and it seems all it's fine but I don't know if this match with the following cases.

- The site was suspended but now it's ok - The site was not suspended - There is other information about telegram suspended

Tiberium 2 hours ago

Direct link to the registry to verify the domain status (JSON): https://rdap.identitydigital.services/rdap/domain/t.me, Ctrl+F for "server hold"

dgellow 3 hours ago

Seems to be working fine? What does suspended imply here?

Tiberium 3 hours ago

It might be working fine for you if the DNS server you're using hasn't propagated this change yet. The Google DNS server has: https://dns.google/query?name=t.me&rr_type=A&ecs=

Suspended means the "serverHold" status. I haven't found any official blog post/announcement yet, but the status is unambiguous, and the fact that it happened to one of the Telegram's main short links means that it might be related to legal matters.

yakohere 3 hours ago

I stored all of my user images links with t.me and on my telegram mini app all users profile don't show the image. Switching to telegram.me

ars 2 hours ago

That's not likely to help, it was the .me people that suspended it, they will likely do the same with telegram.me

yakohere 3 hours ago

for a second I thought i was hacked

orliesaurus an hour ago

centralized dns is always going to give some people headaches, but works for 99.9% of the rest of the people

NDlurker 3 hours ago

Any explanation?

zuzululu 11 minutes ago

i really hope this is it from telegram. its downright causing havoc in countries without the jurisdictional power like korea and japan which have seen insane rise in drug related crime especially in japan they have a new wave of crime from anonymous telegram operators running human cell crime ops

withinrafael 2 hours ago

Didn't t.me also support showing previews of entire channels? Perhaps they got hit with a take-down of sorts due to content (e.g., CSAM) on any particular channel?

monkeywork 2 hours ago

someone enforcing a min character policy on them?

shishcat 2 hours ago

No. There are still many 1 char .ME domains available, and they've always costed an high price. https://imgur.com/a/0NL7oA6

qurren 3 hours ago

Yep, I would never use a registrar called "go daddy". It always sounded like a registrar for noobs that will take adverse actions to "protect" you and this only confirms this.

Tiberium 3 hours ago

The "serverHold" status is not set by GoDaddy, but by the actual .ME registry https://domain.me/

GoDaddy could apply "clientHold" but not "serverHold"

glitchy99 2 hours ago

Weird. The .me registry specifically says there are no restrictions and even advertises Telegram.

loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago

What’s your beef? The name? Because I’ve been super happy with porkbun but damn, that name… and then the official-sounding ones like network solutions are quite shady. don’t judge a registrar by its name I guess.

d3Xt3r 2 hours ago

Not the person you replied to, but GoDaddy are (or at least, were) pretty jnfamous for their sleazy and sexist ads, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi0AqS4e6NI

So I can't imagine any serious organisation wanting to do business with them, unless they're a sleazy organisation themselves.

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_GoDa...

cubefox an hour ago

qurren 2 hours ago

It just doesn't sound professional, and I wouldn't want some "daddy" in a garage in charge of my domain name.

yreg an hour ago

Also namecheap sounds shit, but afaik they have good reputation.

bawolff 2 hours ago

I mean, there was that whole elephant hunting thing...

Waterluvian 2 hours ago

It’s absolutely #%^*ing bizarre to me how many 500+ employee tech companies use it. I just don’t get it. I know IT isn’t web developers but they ought to at least have better opinions on this kind of thing?

tarr11 3 hours ago

Which do you recommend?

belorn 2 hours ago

I would recommend a registrar that would explain to the customer why they would not want a .me domain for anything critical unless the person lives in Montenegro and trust the Government of Montenegro to maintain a good and trust worthy registry.

Otherwise just use which ever registrar is cheapest and who you think will handle any quirks or shenanigans that registries may do to domains you own, and which own system and processes hold high enough standard for you.

FabCH 35 minutes ago

conception 2 hours ago

porkbun are great

pibaker an hour ago

Drakim 2 hours ago

5701652400 3 hours ago

squarespace is legit. GCP cloud domains are moved to them.

arjie an hour ago

lolinder 2 hours ago

drdexebtjl an hour ago

I’ve been happy with Gandi.net for years now. They’re based in France.

FabCH 32 minutes ago

rationalist 2 hours ago

Dynadot. One of the largest registrars, and very competitive pricing like Namecheap. They also have very good features.

SoftTalker 3 hours ago

I've never had a problem with Namecheap but I'm not sure they are really any better as I've never had a problem with GoDaddy either.

sebastiennight 2 hours ago

glitchy99 2 hours ago

kennywinker 2 hours ago

konart 2 hours ago

I'm quite comfortable with Netim

wwalexander 33 minutes ago

Cloudflare

IAmGraydon 2 hours ago

Cloudflare

axus an hour ago

s13k 2 hours ago

porkbun

neverusingit 2 hours ago

qurren 2 hours ago

AWS Route53 or Namecheap

shishcat 2 hours ago

serverHold means like "suspicious activity, domain is administratively held and taken off dns"

EGreg 3 hours ago

This is what the problem is with DNS.

petcat 2 hours ago

Telegram was always shady as hell.