Joe Tidy
Cyber correspondent

There have been several mass internet service outages in the past five years where problems with one company have had huge knock-on effects.

Most of the time these issues are resolved in a few hours as engineers scramble to reverse mistakes or fix things on the fly.

Experts have long pointed to the growing reliance on a small number of internet giants being a factor as more eggs are placed in fewer baskets - when one big company has a glitch, much of modern life and business comes to a standstill.

Here are some recent examples of mass outages and what caused them:

• July 2024: A dodgy piece of code in CrowdStrike cyber security software was automatically installed in computer systems causing them to break down and display a "blue screen of death" error message. Some 8.5 million computers were rendered temporarily useless, knocking many internet services offline
• October 2021: A "configuration error" brought down Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for nearly six hours. Other sites, including X, were also disrupted due to the surge of new visits to their apps
• June 2021: Amazon, Reddit, Twitch, GitHub, Shopify, Spotify, and several news sites were down for around an hour after a previously unknown bug was triggered accidentally by a customer at cloud computing service provider Fastly
• December 2020: Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive and other Google services went down simultaneously for around 90 minutes after the company said it encountered an "internal storage quota issue"

Liv McMahon
Technology reporter

Image source, PA Media

As we've been reporting, many of the world's biggest websites and apps are down due to an outage affecting Amazon Web Services. If you're just joining us, here's a recap of what we know so far:

• Hundreds of websites and apps were knocked offline this morning after an issue at Amazon Web Services in the US
• The cloud computing giant powers services for a huge number of platforms, including Snapchat, Roblox and Lloyds Bank
• Downdetector, used by many to flag problems with online services, says it has seen more than four million reports from users globally, across more than 500 companies
• At around 10:30 BST, Amazon said it was seeing “significant signs of recovery” and, in further updates, said “global services and features" were also recovering
• While this is true of many platforms, some appear to still be experiencing problems – or fresh issues, in the case of Reddit
• We don't know the full details of what has caused a number of critical AWS services to fall offline this morning, but Amazon says it “appears to be related to DNS resolution” related to the way firms access its web servers

Liv McMahon
Technology reporter

We don't know the full details of what has caused a number of critical Amazon Web Services to fall offline this morning and may not for some time.

But Amazon said in one of its updates earlier that the issue "appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1".

DNS, which stands for Domain Name System, is often likened to a phone book for the internet.

It effectively translates the website names people use into IP address numeric equivalents that can be read and understood by computers.

This process basically underpins the way we use the internet, and disruptions to it can leave web browsers unable to locate the content they are looking for.

We've just seen this latest statement from Amazon Web Services: "We continue to observe recovery across most of the affected AWS Services.

"We can confirm global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also recovered.

"We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share."

Amazon Web Services is behind today's outage across a vast number of websites and apps - but its services are not used by lots of other major websites.

HMRC confirms that some of its customers have been impacted by the Amazon Web Services outage - and warns that its helplines are busy.

A spokesperson says: "We're aware that customers are having problems accessing our online services, as part of global issues affecting Amazon Web Services. We're working urgently with them on this matter.

"Our phonelines are currently busy as a result, so for anything that isn't urgent we recommend calling at a later time."

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent

I’ve just tried to return an Amazon parcel at my local Post Office, but it couldn’t be processed.

The Post Office tells me Amazon Click and Collect and Drop Off services are being impacted across the branch network.

It also says the Amazon Web Services (AWS) issue is affecting customers who are trying to top up their pre-payment cards for gas and electricity via Payzone devices.

As a reminder, AWS says it's now seeing "significant signs of recovery".

Tom Gerken
Technology reporter

Lloyds has now confirmed the outage impacting it and its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland are related to today's Amazon Web Services issues.

"You may have seen reports of issues with Amazon Web Services affecting a number of websites and apps across the UK today," it said in a post on X.

"We know this is impacting some of our services right now. We're sorry about this. Please bear with us as we investigate this."

It has drawn frustration from some, including University of Bath IT Professor James Davenport, who said it was "worrying" to see UK banks impacted.

He said banks should be "confining their usage" to the UK or Europe - rather than relying on services that are running out of the US.

People on social media continue to report that the outage has led to their cards being declined - something the BBC has not been able to independently verify.

Lloyds has been approached for comment.

Image source, PA Media

Amazon Web Services, the cloud company behind the outage, has just released a statement saying: "We are seeing significant signs of recovery.

"Most requests should now be succeeding.

"We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information," it reports on its website.

As a reminder, Amazon Web Services (AWS) powers the infrastructure behind millions of websites and apps.

Liv McMahon
Technology reporter

Downdetector, the platform outage monitor owned by Ookla, has told the BBC it has seen more than four million reports of issues globally just this morning – more than double the 1.8m reports it sees on a full weekday normally.

"At 06:56 UTC (02:56 AM EDT) users started reporting issues with AWS, in particular with the US East 1 region," it said.

"As of 09:50 AM BST (08:50 UTC), over 500 companies, across all of our 66 sites, are reporting issues."

The company said this includes more than 400,000 reports in the UK alone in the two hours since the outage began.

Liv McMahon
Technology reporter

While platforms including Snapchat, HMRC and Roblox are experiencing issues this morning, it’s important to note that not all websites and apps are having problems.

Google services, for instance, which run on the company’s own cloud computing platform, appear to be stable.

Some may also have a range of different cloud providers or services in place to fall back on in case one has problems.

Meta platforms including Facebook and Instagram, which experienced their own historic blackout in 2021, also seem to be running as normal.

Elon Musk has chimed in to say that his own social media platform, X, is unaffected.

The Amazon Web Services outage is causing problems across dozens of websites and apps, including Ring doorbells.

Some users report seeing a "failed to connect" sign when they open the live view:

The screenshot below from Downdetector shows a large spike in the number of users experiencing problems accessing Ring in the last few hours:

Image source, DownDetector

Liv McMahon
Technology reporter

Outages affecting web platforms and services are nothing new - barely a week goes by without something going down that many people rely on for vital web services, such as Wi-Fi and internet banking.

Multiple sites going down in one single outage are somewhat less common – but something experts say are becoming more frequent because many platforms use the same provider for their services.

Amazon Web Services, for instance, is a huge provider for cloud computing services. So, when it has any issues, these can ripple across the vast number of sites that rely on it.

In the past, we’ve seen different kinds of providers such as content delivery networks like Fastly knock multiple services including gov.uk​ offline at once.

We've just had an update from Amazon Web Services, which says: "We have identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region."

"We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery."

As a reminder, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon's cloud computing division, and its infrastructure underpins millions of large companies' websites and platforms.

Tom Gerken
Technology reporter

Image source, PA Media

As we said a little earlier, there are now reports that customers of several banks are also facing issues.

Lloyds, as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland, are all facing thousands of reports of outages, according to Downdetector.

People have reported being unable to log in to their online and mobile banking apps, and there are also reports on social media that some people have had card payments declined – although the BBC has not been able to independently verify this.

It is also not known whether this is linked to the Amazon Web Services outage, or a separate issue.

Lloyds has been approached for comment.

Tom Gerken
Technology reporter

It’s hard to say just how many apps have been knocked out by this, but suffice to say it isn't a short list - at least according to Downdetector, a site where people report outages:

• Snapchat
• Zoom
• Roblox
• Clash Royale
• My Fitness Pal
• Life360
• Clash of Clans
• Fortnite
• Canva
• Wordle
• Signal
• Coinbase
• Duolingo
• Slack
• Smartsheet
• PokemonGo
• Epic Games
• PlayStation Network
• Peloton
• Rocket League… the list goes on and on

Even the website for the UK’s tax authority HMRC is named as not working properly - and when we tested it, it displayed an error message.

Of course, remember these are just reports. It is possible that many of these platforms may be working well for some but not others.

How is the disruption to internet services and apps affecting you?

You can get in touch in the following ways:  

• Email: bbcyourvoice@bbc.co.uk, external 

• WhatsApp: +44 7756 165803 , external 

• Upload your pictures and video  

 Please read our terms & conditions and privacy policy  

 In some cases a selection of your comments and questions will be published, displaying your name and location as you provide it unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published.  

Liv McMahon
Technology reporter

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the tech giant's cloud computing division, and its infrastructure underpins millions of large companies' websites and platforms.

Many of the apps on your smartphone are actually running on AWS data centres.

In an update on its service status page where it highlights any problems, it said it could confirm "significant error rates for requests" to one of its endpoints for services in its US-EAST-1 region.

Banks are also apparently affected by the outage, including Halifax, Lloyds and the Bank of Scotland, according to Downdetector.

As a reminder, Amazon Web Services powers much of the infrastructure behind many websites, which is why the impact is so widespread.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is part of the retail giant Amazon, says in an update on its status page there are "increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region".

Engineers are "immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause", it adds.

User reports of issues affecting platforms are spiking, according to platform outage monitor Downdetector - with more than 5,000 issues flagged by Snapchat users.

Here's some of the brands users are reporting issues with:

Image source, DownDetector