Major Web Failure Affects Dozens Sites and Apps

An extensive online disruption has disrupted numerous sites and apps around the world, with users reporting problems getting online after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing platform.

The affected services include the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, along with multiple Amazon-managed services like its primary shopping platform and the Ring security home security firm.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was impacted along with its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and the Scottish bank, while there were also reports of issues accessing the HM Revenue and Customs online portal on Monday morning. Also in the UK, several Ring customers used online platforms to state their security devices were malfunctioning.

In the UK alone, accounts of disruptions on particular apps totaled the thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the outage began in the east coast of the United States at the cloud division, a unit that supplies vital internet backbone for numerous businesses, who rent out resources on Amazon servers. Amazon Web Services is the biggest global online services service.

Shortly after late night (PDT) in the US (morning UK time), Amazon confirmed “increased failure rates and slowdowns” for AWS services in a region on the east coast of the America. The widespread consequence was seen to disrupt services around the world, and the Downdetector site indicating problems with the same sites in multiple continents.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a platform that tracks internet outages, further indicated a increase in issues on that morning, and numerous instances found in the Virginia area, the region of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the issues began.