Significant Web Disruption Hits Numerous Online Platforms and Mobile Apps

A widespread web outage has affected numerous online platforms and mobile apps around the world, with users reporting issues accessing the internet after problems at Amazon’s online infrastructure system.

The affected services encompass Snapchat, Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, along with multiple Amazon-owned platforms such as its main retail website and the Ring security device manufacturer.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was affected as well as its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of issues using the HM Revenue and Customs online portal on that morning. Furthermore across the UK, multiple Ring users used online platforms to state their home gadgets were failing.

In the UK alone, accounts of problems on individual platforms ran into the many thousands for each platform.

Officials confirmed that the issue originated in the Atlantic coast of the US at AWS, a section that supplies essential online backbone for a host of businesses, who utilize resources on Amazon servers. Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest cloud computing service.

Just after the start of the day (PDT) in the United States (8am BST), officials reported “increased error rates and delays” for AWS services in a region on the east coast of the America. The cascading impact appeared to affect services worldwide, and the problem monitoring service showing problems with the identical platforms in different parts of the world.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a service that reports on web disruptions, further indicated a increase in issues on the start of the week, and numerous instances found in Virginia, the region of the AWS US-East-1 zone where AWS said the issues began.