It underpins much of the internet, but Amazon Web Services (AWS) is down for thousands of users worldwide on Monday morning.
An outage has taken down hundreds of popular websites including Snapchat, gaming platforms Roblox and Fortnite, and languages app Duolingo.
Also affected are Amazon services including Amazon.com, Amazon Alexa, Ring and Amazon Prime Video.
The issues began shortly after 8am BST Monday, according to DownDetector, with more than 6,000 reports from affected US customers.
Another 1,600 users and counting are affected in the UK, according to DownDetector, a site that monitors internet outages.
Amazon Web Services is hit with a worldwide outage that impacted hundreds of websites that use the company’s cloud-hosting service
The issues began shortly after 8am BST Monday, according to DownDetector, with more than 6,000 reports from affected US customers
DownDetector gets network status updates from social media platforms, reports submitted to its website and other sources around the web.
It ‘only reports an incident when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day’.
AWS provides cloud computing services to individuals, universities, governments and companies worldwide, such as servers, storage, networking, remote computing, email, mobile development and security.
When AWS goes down, so do other websites that use its services, which is an embarrassing blow to the Amazon-owned platform – as these companies, universities, individuals and governments pay to use the services.
According to Dataconomy, the issue appears to stem from problems at Amazon’s massive data center facilities in North Virginia, a critical hub for the global internet.
It is unclear what the cause of the outage is; Daily Mail has contacted AWS for comment.
Some of the platforms affected on Monday morning include Amazon services like Amazon.com and Ring as well as gaming platforms like Fortnite and Roblox
Another 1,600 users and counting are affected in the UK, according to DownDetector, a site that monitors internet outages
There are many causes behind online outages, but the problem is mostly because of technical errors relating to configuration.
However, other outages are due to cyber attacks – attempts by criminals to damage or destroy a computer network or system.
