Substantial Online Failure Impacts Numerous Online Platforms and Apps

A widespread internet outage has disrupted many online platforms and mobile apps around the world, as users reporting issues connecting to the web after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing system.

The affected apps encompass Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, in addition to several Amazon-owned services including its primary shopping platform and the Ring home security firm.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was impacted in addition to its affiliates the bank Halifax and the Scottish bank, and further notifications of problems using the the tax authority website on the start of the week. Additionally in Britain, several Ring customers turned to social media to complain their home gadgets were malfunctioning.

Solely in the United Kingdom, notifications of problems on individual applications ran into the many thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the issue started in the eastern region of the United States at the cloud division, a unit that provides crucial online infrastructure for many companies, who lease space on the company's servers. Amazon Web Services is the biggest global web hosting service.

Shortly after late night (PDT) in the United States (morning UK time), the company announced “elevated error rates and slowdowns” for the cloud services in a area on the east coast of the America. The widespread consequence seemed to hit platforms globally, with the problem monitoring service reporting issues with the same sites in various regions.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a platform that monitors internet outages, also reported a rise in problems on the start of the week, with many of them located in the Virginia area, the region of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the problems began.