Substantial Internet Failure Hits Dozens Online Platforms and Mobile Apps

A widespread web outage has impacted numerous websites and apps worldwide, and users reporting problems connecting to the web following issues at the cloud computing platform.

The impacted services include the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, in addition to multiple Amazon-owned platforms such as its key e-commerce website and the Ring doorbell device manufacturer.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was affected as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland, with additional accounts of difficulties reaching the HMRC site on Monday morning. Additionally in Britain, multiple Ring customers used networks to report their doorbells were not working.

Solely in the United Kingdom, notifications of issues on particular apps reached the tens of thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the outage originated in the Atlantic coast of the America at the cloud division, a division that supplies crucial online backbone for many businesses, who rent out capacity on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest cloud computing platform.

Soon after midnight (PDT) in the United States (8am BST), officials reported “increased problem frequencies and slowdowns” for AWS services in a area on the east coast of the United States. The widespread consequence appeared to hit services around the world, with the problem monitoring service indicating outages with the same sites in different parts of the world.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a service that tracks internet outages, further indicated a surge in issues on the start of the week, with many of them found in Virginia, the location of the eastern US data center where AWS said the outage started.