Major Online Failure Impacts Many Sites and Applications

A large-scale internet disruption has affected dozens websites and mobile apps worldwide, as users experiencing issues accessing the internet after problems at the web hosting service.

The affected apps encompass the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, along with multiple Amazon-operated platforms like its key e-commerce website and the Ring security doorbell company.

Throughout Britain, Lloyds bank was impacted in addition to its branches Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and additional accounts of difficulties accessing the HMRC site on the start of the week. Also in the UK, multiple Ring device owners used online platforms to complain their security devices were failing.

In the UK alone, accounts of disruptions on individual platforms reached the tens of thousands for each app.

The company stated that the outage started in the east coast of the America at AWS, a division that provides crucial web backbone for numerous businesses, who lease capacity on AWS infrastructure. The cloud platform is the biggest global web hosting platform.

Soon after late night (PDT) in the America (8am BST), Amazon confirmed “elevated failure rates and delays” for Amazon's platforms in a area on the east coast of the US. The cascading impact appeared to affect apps worldwide, with the Downdetector site indicating outages with the corresponding services in various regions.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a platform that reports on internet outages, also reported a increase in outages on the start of the week, with many of them located in Virginia, the region of the eastern US data center where AWS said the outage originated.