Major Online Disruption Impacts Dozens Sites and Mobile Apps

An extensive internet disruption has affected numerous sites and apps around the world, and users noting problems getting online due to difficulties at the cloud computing service.

The impacted apps include Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, along with multiple Amazon-owned services such as its key e-commerce website and the Ring security doorbell company.

Throughout Britain, the financial institution Lloyds was affected in addition to its affiliates Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of problems reaching the HM Revenue and Customs website on that morning. Also in the UK, many Ring customers used online platforms to report their security devices were malfunctioning.

Solely in the United Kingdom, reports of problems on specific apps ran into the thousands for every service.

The company stated that the outage started in the Atlantic coast of the US at Amazon Web Services, a division that provides essential internet framework for numerous businesses, who lease capacity on Amazon servers. Amazon Web Services is the biggest global web hosting service.

Just after late night (PDT) in the US (8am BST), the company announced “increased problem frequencies and delays” for the cloud services in a area on the Atlantic seaboard of the US. The ripple effect seemed to affect apps globally, and the outage tracking website showing problems with the same sites in various regions.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a service that tracks online failures, also reported a surge in issues on that morning, with many of them located in Virginia, the location of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where AWS said the problems began.