Snapchat, Roblox and banks hit by global internet outage linked to AWS
Many of the world’s biggest websites and apps — including Snapchat, Roblox and several major UK banks — were knocked offline on Sunday after an outage affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS), the tech giant’s cloud computing arm.
The disruption caused widespread problems for millions of users worldwide, with banking, gaming, and public services all impacted.
What happened?
The problems began early Sunday morning, when AWS reported “increased error rates and latency” across several of its systems in the US-EAST-1 region, one of its largest data centres.
AWS infrastructure underpins millions of websites and apps globally. When the system faltered, the effects rippled across sectors — from entertainment to finance and government services.
Outage tracking website Downdetector said it had received more than four million reports of issues globally by mid-afternoon, double the number it typically records on a normal weekday.
More than 500 companies were affected, with the UK seeing over 400,000 outage reports within hours.
Apps and services affected
Among the affected platforms were Snapchat, Roblox, Zoom, Slack, Canva, Duolingo, MyFitnessPal, and gaming services including Fortnite, PlayStation Network, and Epic Games.
The UK tax authority HMRC confirmed that some of its online services were down. Customers were advised to delay non-urgent calls, as its helplines were experiencing heavy demand.
Post Office branches also reported problems, saying Amazon Click and Collect and Payzone top-up services were disrupted.
Meanwhile, users of Ring doorbells, another Amazon-owned service, said they were unable to connect to live camera feeds.
Banks among those impacted
Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax, and the Bank of Scotland faced difficulties logging in to online and mobile banking, with some reporting that their cards were declined — although the BBC has not independently verified these claims.
Lloyds confirmed that the outage was linked to AWS, saying: “We know this is impacting some of our services right now. We’re sorry about this and are working hard to restore normal service.”
Professor James Davenport, an IT expert at the University of Bath, said it was “worrying” to see UK financial institutions affected by a US-based infrastructure issue. He urged banks to “confine their usage to UK or European data centres” for better resilience.
Amazon says recovery underway
AWS engineers said they had identified a potential root cause linked to its DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 region and were working on “multiple parallel paths” to restore services.
By late afternoon, Amazon said it was “seeing significant signs of recovery”, with “most requests now succeeding”, though some users might continue to experience delays as systems cleared backlogged data.
How wide was the impact?
The outage did not affect all corners of the internet. Services running on alternative cloud providers, including Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, appeared to remain stable.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) were unaffected, with Elon Musk noting on his platform that “X is running fine”.
Why are outages like this increasing?
Experts say that large-scale outages have become more frequent as many companies rely on the same few cloud computing providers.
“When one of these providers has a problem, the impact is magnified,” said BBC technology reporter Liv McMahon. “A single point of failure can ripple across hundreds of services at once.”
In 2021, a separate outage in Amazon’s network took down major streaming services, airline booking systems and delivery apps.
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services, launched in 2006, provides cloud computing infrastructure for businesses around the world — powering everything from online storage and data processing to streaming and mobile apps.
It is the world’s largest cloud provider, used by millions of organisations, including banks, government departments, and global entertainment platforms.
What happens next
AWS said it continues to monitor systems as recovery progresses and will issue further updates if needed.
While most apps and websites appear to be returning online, Sunday’s outage has reignited debate over the world’s dependence on a handful of US-based tech giants to keep the internet running.
Source: BBC