Significant Internet Disruption Affects Dozens Online Platforms and Mobile Apps

A widespread online outage has impacted many websites and mobile apps around the world, with users reporting issues connecting to the web following issues at Amazon’s web hosting system.

The disrupted apps include Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, as well as a host of Amazon-operated operations like its key e-commerce site and the Ring doorbell doorbell company.

Across the United Kingdom, Lloyds bank was disrupted as well as its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and the Scottish bank, while there were also reports of problems using the HMRC site on that morning. Furthermore across the UK, multiple Ring customers turned to online platforms to complain their security devices were malfunctioning.

Solely in the United Kingdom, accounts of disruptions on particular apps totaled the many thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the issue started in the east coast of the US at the cloud division, a section that provides crucial internet infrastructure for many companies, who lease space on Amazon servers. AWS is the world’s largest online services system.

Just after the start of the day (PDT) in the United States (8am BST), officials reported “higher problem frequencies and latencies” for Amazon's platforms in a area on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. The ripple effect appeared to affect platforms worldwide, and the outage tracking website reporting issues with the corresponding services in different parts of the world.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a service that monitors web disruptions, additionally noted a surge in outages on the start of the week, including several cases found in the state of Virginia, the site of the AWS US-East-1 zone where officials confirmed the outage began.