Significant Online Failure Hits Numerous Sites and Mobile Apps

A large-scale web outage has affected numerous online platforms and mobile apps globally, and users reporting problems connecting to the web after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing service.

The impacted apps encompass the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, along with a host of Amazon-managed services including its main retail website and the Ring doorbell company.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was disrupted along with its branches Halifax and the Scottish bank, while there were also reports of problems accessing the HM Revenue and Customs site on the start of the week. Furthermore across the UK, several Ring device owners turned to social media to state their home gadgets were malfunctioning.

Just within Britain, notifications of disruptions on specific platforms totaled the many thousands for each platform.

Amazon reported that the problem started in the eastern region of the United States at Amazon Web Services, a division that provides essential web backbone for many firms, who lease space on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the biggest global web hosting system.

Shortly after late night (PDT) in the US (morning UK time), officials reported “higher failure rates and latencies” for Amazon's platforms in a area on the eastern US of the US. The ripple effect seemed to disrupt services globally, with the problem monitoring service reporting issues with the identical platforms in different parts of the world.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a tool that monitors web disruptions, also reported a rise in problems on Monday morning, and numerous instances situated in the Virginia area, the site of the eastern US data center where officials confirmed the issues originated.