Significant Internet Outage Impacts Many Websites and Applications

An extensive online disruption has impacted dozens sites and mobile apps worldwide, with users noting issues getting online after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing service.

The impacted services comprise Snapchat, Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, as well as a host of Amazon-operated platforms such as its key e-commerce platform and the Ring doorbell device manufacturer.

In the UK, Lloyds bank was affected along with its affiliates the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of difficulties reaching the HM Revenue and Customs online portal on Monday morning. Additionally in Britain, several Ring users took to online platforms to report their security devices were not working.

In the UK alone, reports of problems on specific apps ran into the tens of thousands for each platform.

Amazon reported that the outage began in the eastern region of the United States at the cloud division, a division that supplies essential online infrastructure for numerous businesses, who rent out capacity on the company's servers. AWS is the biggest global online services service.

Soon after midnight (PDT) in the United States (8 in the morning BST), Amazon confirmed “higher error rates and slowdowns” for the cloud services in a region on the Atlantic seaboard of the America. The ripple effect was seen to affect apps globally, and the Downdetector site indicating problems with the same sites in multiple continents.

Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, a platform that monitors online failures, additionally noted a surge in outages on that morning, with many of them situated in the Virginia area, the location of the AWS US-East-1 zone where officials confirmed the outage started.