Significant Internet Failure Affects Many Online Platforms and Apps

A large-scale web disruption has disrupted many sites and mobile apps globally, and users experiencing troubles accessing the internet after problems at the web hosting platform.

The disrupted services comprise the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, as well as several Amazon-operated services like its key e-commerce site and the Ring security device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, Lloyds bank was disrupted along with its branches the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and further notifications of issues accessing the HM Revenue and Customs site on Monday morning. Also in the UK, multiple Ring users used online platforms to complain their security devices were failing.

In the UK alone, reports of problems on individual platforms ran into the many thousands for every service.

Officials confirmed that the problem began in the eastern region of the United States at Amazon Web Services, a division that supplies essential web framework for numerous firms, who utilize space on AWS infrastructure. The cloud platform is the biggest global web hosting platform.

Just after late night (PDT) in the United States (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “elevated error rates and latencies” for the cloud services in a zone on the eastern US of the United States. The cascading impact appeared to affect services around the world, with the outage tracking website reporting issues with the same sites in multiple continents.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a tool that tracks internet outages, additionally noted a rise in problems on that morning, with many of them located in the state of Virginia, the location of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the problems began.