Substantial Online Disruption Hits Numerous Websites and Apps

An extensive internet outage has impacted numerous websites and apps worldwide, as users experiencing problems accessing the internet after problems at Amazon’s web hosting platform.

The disrupted services include the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, along with several Amazon-managed services like its main retail platform and the Ring device manufacturer.

Throughout Britain, the financial institution Lloyds was affected as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and the Scottish bank, and additional accounts of problems accessing the HM Revenue and Customs website on the start of the week. Also in the UK, multiple Ring customers took to networks to complain their doorbells were malfunctioning.

In the UK alone, accounts of problems on individual apps totaled the tens of thousands for every service.

Amazon reported that the outage began in the eastern region of the US at AWS, a section that supplies vital internet infrastructure for numerous businesses, who utilize capacity on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the most extensive web hosting platform.

Shortly after late night (PDT) in the America (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “higher problem frequencies and slowdowns” for Amazon's platforms in a region on the east coast of the United States. The ripple effect was seen to disrupt apps globally, and the outage tracking website reporting outages with the corresponding services in multiple continents.

Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, a tool that tracks online failures, further indicated a increase in problems on the start of the week, and numerous instances located in the state of Virginia, the site of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where officials confirmed the problems began.