Substantial Online Failure Affects Many Online Platforms and Applications

A widespread online outage has impacted dozens sites and mobile apps globally, with users reporting issues accessing the internet due to difficulties at the online infrastructure platform.

The disrupted services encompass the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, in addition to several Amazon-managed operations including its key e-commerce website and the Ring security device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was disrupted along with its affiliates Halifax and the Scottish bank, with also reports of problems reaching the the tax authority site on the start of the week. Also in the UK, multiple Ring customers used online platforms to complain their doorbells were not working.

In the UK alone, reports of issues on specific apps reached the thousands for each platform.

Officials confirmed that the outage began in the Atlantic coast of the America at AWS, a division that supplies essential internet backbone for many companies, who rent out space on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the biggest global web hosting platform.

Shortly after midnight (PDT) in the US (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “increased error rates and latencies” for Amazon's platforms in a region on the eastern US of the America. The ripple effect appeared to hit platforms around the world, and the outage tracking website indicating issues with the identical platforms in various regions.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a tool that tracks online failures, further indicated a increase in issues on that morning, including several cases located in Virginia, the location of the AWS US-East-1 zone where AWS said the issues started.