Major Online Disruption Impacts Dozens Websites and Apps

A widespread internet disruption has impacted numerous sites and mobile apps worldwide, as users reporting problems getting online following issues at the online infrastructure service.

The affected services comprise the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, along with several Amazon-operated operations including its main retail website and the Ring doorbell home security firm.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was affected along with its affiliates Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of issues reaching the HMRC online portal on the start of the week. Also in the UK, multiple Ring device owners took to online platforms to complain their doorbells were not working.

In the UK alone, accounts of disruptions on particular applications reached the thousands for each platform.

Officials confirmed that the problem started in the east coast of the United States at AWS, a unit that offers vital online infrastructure for many businesses, who utilize capacity on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the biggest global web hosting service.

Shortly after the start of the day (PDT) in the US (morning UK time), the company announced “increased failure rates and slowdowns” for Amazon's platforms in a area on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. The widespread consequence was seen to disrupt services worldwide, with the Downdetector site showing issues with the identical platforms in different parts of the world.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a platform that reports on internet outages, additionally noted a rise in outages on the start of the week, with many of them situated in Virginia, the site of the eastern US data center where AWS said the problems began.