Major Internet Disruption Affects Dozens Websites and Applications

A large-scale web outage has affected many online platforms and apps globally, as users experiencing troubles accessing the internet after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing service.

The disrupted apps encompass Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, along with a host of Amazon-owned services like its primary shopping platform and the Ring home security firm.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was impacted along with its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and the Scottish bank, while there were also reports of issues using the HMRC website on the start of the week. Also in the UK, multiple Ring customers turned to networks to complain their home gadgets were failing.

In the UK alone, accounts of issues on individual apps ran into the thousands for each platform.

Amazon reported that the problem started in the east coast of the America at the cloud division, a section that supplies essential web infrastructure for a host of firms, who rent out resources on AWS infrastructure. AWS is the most extensive web hosting system.

Just after the start of the day (PDT) in the United States (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “increased error rates and slowdowns” for the cloud services in a region on the east coast of the US. The ripple effect appeared to disrupt apps worldwide, with the outage tracking website indicating problems with the same sites in various regions.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a service that monitors online failures, further indicated a increase in outages on Monday morning, and numerous instances situated in the Virginia area, the location of the AWS US-East-1 zone where officials confirmed the problems originated.