Major Internet Outage Hits Dozens Online Platforms and Apps

An extensive web outage has disrupted dozens sites and apps globally, as users reporting troubles getting online due to difficulties at Amazon’s web hosting system.

The affected apps encompass the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, as well as multiple Amazon-operated platforms such as its key e-commerce platform and the Ring doorbell home security firm.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was disrupted as well as its branches the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of difficulties reaching the the tax authority online portal on that morning. Also in the UK, several Ring customers turned to social media to report their security devices were failing.

Just within Britain, reports of issues on individual platforms totaled the many thousands for every service.

Officials confirmed that the problem started in the eastern region of the America at AWS, a section that provides vital internet backbone for a host of businesses, who lease space on the company's servers. The cloud platform is the world’s largest web hosting service.

Soon after late night (PDT) in the America (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “higher problem frequencies and delays” for AWS services in a region on the Atlantic seaboard of the US. The widespread consequence appeared to disrupt apps around the world, and the problem monitoring service reporting problems with the corresponding services in different parts of the world.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a tool that monitors web disruptions, further indicated a surge in problems on the start of the week, with many of them located in the state of Virginia, the site of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the issues started.