Italian email and digital services collective Autistici/Inventati experienced disruption to its mail services shortly after being added to a US sanctions list.
On 26 August 2026, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added the collective to its Specially Designated Nationals list under Executive Order 13224, a counterterrorism authority. It was designated in the same action as Palestine Action, a UK organisation proscribed as a terrorist group by the UK government in July 2025, and Masar Badil, which Treasury describes as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Treasury said the collective provided material or technological support in support of an act of terrorism, describing it as supplying hosting, encrypted email, chat and video conferencing. Autistici/Inventati rejected the allegations, saying it provides tools for digital communication and digital self-defence.
OFAC issued General License 36 alongside the designation, authorising wind-down of transactions through 25 September 2026.
On 28 August the autistici.org domain became unreachable. Records showed it in serverHold status, preventing normal resolution through the DNS. The collective said its servers remained operational.
The disruption affected @autistici.org addresses. In a 30 August update, the collective said users could read existing messages but could not send or receive new mail while it worked on a replacement domain. Users on other hosted domains were directed to inventati.org, which still resolves.
Autistici/Inventati attributes the problem to the .org registry level. The .org registry is operated by Public Interest Registry, based in the United States. The registrar for autistici.org is French. serverHold is applied at registry level. The collective says it has not established that Public Interest Registry acted on an OFAC instruction, or that ICANN ordered the suspension. Public Interest Registry has made no public statement. Emailexpert has approached the registry and the registrar for comment.
A designation blocks property held by US persons and generally prohibits transactions by them, with strict liability penalties and secondary sanctions risk for foreign financial institutions. The compliance decisions fall to intermediaries: registries, registrars, certificate authorities and payment providers.
Mail operators are asking what it means for delivery. A thread on the Delta Chat forum raises whether other servers should stop accepting mail from a sanctioned host.
