Substantial Internet Outage Impacts Dozens Websites and Mobile Apps

A large-scale internet failure has affected dozens websites and mobile apps globally, with users experiencing problems accessing the internet due to difficulties at the cloud computing system.

The impacted apps encompass the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, as well as several Amazon-managed operations including its primary shopping site and the Ring doorbell doorbell company.

Across the United Kingdom, Lloyds bank was affected as well as its branches Halifax and Bank of Scotland, while there were also reports of difficulties reaching the the tax authority website on that morning. Also in the UK, multiple Ring customers took to social media to complain their security devices were not working.

Just within Britain, notifications of issues on individual apps totaled the many thousands for each app.

Officials confirmed that the problem started in the Atlantic coast of the US at Amazon Web Services, a division that supplies essential online backbone for many firms, who rent out resources on Amazon servers. AWS is the most extensive web hosting service.

Shortly after midnight (PDT) in the US (8am BST), the company announced “increased failure rates and delays” for the cloud services in a region on the Atlantic seaboard of the America. The cascading impact seemed to disrupt services worldwide, and the Downdetector site showing problems with the corresponding services in different parts of the world.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a platform that reports on online failures, additionally noted a surge in outages on the start of the week, and numerous instances situated in the Virginia area, the site of the eastern US data center where the company stated the problems began.