Significant Web Outage Impacts Dozens Online Platforms and Applications

A widespread online outage has affected dozens websites and mobile apps globally, as users reporting issues getting online after problems at Amazon’s online infrastructure service.

The disrupted platforms encompass Snapchat, Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, in addition to a host of Amazon-managed operations like its primary shopping website and the Ring doorbell doorbell company.

In the UK, Lloyds bank was affected along with its branches the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, while there were further notifications of difficulties reaching the HM Revenue and Customs online portal on that morning. Also in the UK, multiple Ring users used online platforms to report their security devices were failing.

In the UK alone, notifications of disruptions on specific apps reached the tens of thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the problem began in the east coast of the America at the cloud division, a division that offers essential internet backbone for many businesses, who rent out space on the company's servers. AWS is the biggest global web hosting system.

Shortly after midnight (PDT) in the US (morning UK time), officials reported “increased problem frequencies and latencies” for AWS services in a zone on the Atlantic seaboard of the US. The ripple effect was seen to disrupt apps around the world, with the outage tracking website reporting outages with the same sites in multiple continents.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a service that tracks online failures, further indicated a increase in problems on that morning, with many of them situated in the Virginia area, the site of the eastern US data center where the company stated the problems originated.