Source: in-cyprus.philenews.com
A widespread internet outage is affecting many of the world’s most popular apps and websites, with services including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo and Canva experiencing significant disruption.
According to tracking website Down Detector, the problems began around 8am in the UK and appear to stem from issues with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing platform that provides infrastructure for a substantial portion of the modern internet.
Amazon has confirmed on its service status page that it is experiencing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services.” The company’s engineers are “actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause,” according to the latest update, though the outage has now persisted for more than 90 minutes.
The disruption appears to be linked to a specific AWS facility in northern Virginia, but is affecting users worldwide. Down Detector shows reports from virtually every region across the various affected platforms.
AWS, which launched in 2006, allows companies to rent computing power and server infrastructure rather than building their own data centers. As the dominant provider in the cloud services market, generating $108 billion last year and accounting for the majority of Amazon’s profits, any AWS outage can rapidly cascade across the internet ecosystem.
The extensive list of affected services includes:
- Social platforms: Snapchat, Ring, Life360
- Gaming: Roblox, Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Fortnite, Pokémon Go, PlayStation
- Educational apps: Wordle, Duolingo
- Financial services: Xero, Coinbase
- Productivity tools: Canva, My Fitness Pal
- Government services: HMRC (UK tax authority)
- Telecommunications: Vodafone
- Amazon’s own services: Amazon.com, Amazon Music, Prime Video
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