Major Internet Outage Affects Many Websites and Mobile Apps

A widespread internet disruption has impacted numerous online platforms and applications globally, as users noting troubles getting online due to difficulties at the web hosting platform.

The impacted platforms include the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, along with a host of Amazon-managed platforms such as its primary shopping website and the Ring doorbell company.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was disrupted in addition to its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, with further notifications of issues using the the tax authority site on that morning. Additionally in Britain, many Ring users used social media to complain their home gadgets were malfunctioning.

Just within Britain, reports of issues on individual applications reached the thousands for each platform.

Officials confirmed that the problem originated in the east coast of the United States at Amazon Web Services, a unit that provides vital online backbone for many businesses, who rent out space on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest online services service.

Soon after midnight (PDT) in the America (morning UK time), the company announced “elevated failure rates and delays” for AWS services in a area on the Atlantic seaboard of the US. The cascading impact appeared to hit apps worldwide, with the Downdetector site reporting issues with the corresponding services in multiple continents.

Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, a service that monitors internet outages, additionally noted a surge in issues on that morning, with many of them found in Virginia, the site of the eastern US data center where officials confirmed the issues started.