Substantial Internet Outage Affects Dozens Sites and Mobile Apps

A large-scale web failure has impacted numerous online platforms and applications globally, with users noting issues connecting to the web after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing system.

The impacted platforms encompass the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, along with a host of Amazon-managed operations including its primary shopping site and the Ring doorbell company.

Throughout Britain, Lloyds bank was impacted as well as its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and the Scottish bank, and further notifications of problems using the HM Revenue and Customs online portal on that morning. Furthermore across the UK, several Ring device owners turned to networks to complain their home gadgets were failing.

Solely in the United Kingdom, accounts of issues on individual applications reached the tens of thousands for each platform.

Amazon reported that the outage originated in the eastern region of the US at Amazon Web Services, a unit that supplies vital online infrastructure for a host of companies, who rent out space on the company's servers. The cloud platform is the biggest global cloud computing platform.

Just after the start of the day (PDT) in the United States (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “increased failure rates and delays” for Amazon's platforms in a area on the eastern US of the United States. The ripple effect seemed to disrupt platforms globally, with the Downdetector site reporting problems with the corresponding services in different parts of the world.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a service that monitors internet outages, further indicated a increase in issues on that morning, and numerous instances situated in the Virginia area, the location of the eastern US data center where AWS said the outage started.