As you might have already noticed, a number of big websites and platforms are currently experiencing a serious outage around the world, with Snapchat, Duolingo, and Canva among those affected.

The outage has affected banks, as well as online platforms, and is no doubt causing disruption around the globe as people struggle to get work done or access their finances.

The reason behind all of this is a problem at Amazon Web Services.

What is Amazon Web Services?

Amazon Web Services provides the infrastructure behind a load of websites that we all know and love, propping up a large chunk of the internet.

When it has a problem, that has a knock on effect, as we are seeing today.

It’s the cloud computing division of Amazon, and underpins many apps and websites of large companies.

According to a statement on its website, there are ‘increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region’.

Fear not though, as they assure us that engineers are ‘immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause’.

Hopefully they can get it all back online as soon as possible.

In the meantime, here is a full list of sites that we know to be down currently.

Well, a full list of sites that we know are down anyway - the list keeps on growing and growing.

1. Amazon.com
2. Prime Video
3. Alexa
4. Ring
5. Goodreads
6. The New York Times
7. Snapchat
8. Slack
9. Zoom
10. Substack
11. Robinhood
12. Venmo
13. Chime
14. Coinbase
15. Xero
16. HMRC (UK tax authority)
17. Roblox
18. Fortnite
19. PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds)
20. Rainbow Six Siege
21. Clash Royale
22. Clash of Clans
23. Crunchyroll
24. Apple TV
25. Canvas (Instructure)
26. CollegeBoard
27. Canva
28. Duolingo
29. MyFitnessPal
30. Strava
31. Whatnot
32. Life360
33. Verizon
34. Perplexity AI
35. Flickr
36. McDonald’s app
37. Wordle
38. Xbox Network
39. PlayStation Network

A number of major platforms are down around the world, including big hitters like Snapchat, Canva, Duolingo, and Roblox.

This is believed to be a result of an international problem affecting Amazon Web Services.

AWS is responsible for a lot of the back-end infrastructure of some of the world’s biggest websites and platforms, so when it has problems, we - and many other people - have problems too.

Snapchat, Duolingo, Canva, and Roblox are among the big sites that are down

On the AWS status page, a statement reads: "We are investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region.

“We will provide another update in the next 30-45 minutes."

At the time of writing, this issue is still ongoing.

It’s not just those wanting to extend their language learning streak or make up a snappy picture for an online article - an example close to home, there.

Banks are also experiencing outages too, with Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds reporting issues.

We’ll bring more as we have it, but here’s a full list of websites experiencing outages currently:

1. Amazon.com
2. Prime Video
3. Alexa
4. Ring
5. Goodreads
6. The New York Times
7. Snapchat
8. Slack
9. Zoom
10. Substack
11. Robinhood
12. Venmo
13. Chime
14. Coinbase
15. Xero
16. HMRC (UK tax authority)
17. Roblox
18. Fortnite
19. PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds)
20. Rainbow Six Siege
21. Clash Royale
22. Clash of Clans
23. Crunchyroll
24. Apple TV
25. Canvas (Instructure)
26. CollegeBoard
27. Canva
28. Duolingo
29. MyFitnessPal
30. Strava
31. Whatnot
32. Life360
33. Verizon
34. Perplexity AI
35. Flickr
36. McDonald’s app
37. Wordle
38. Xbox Network
39. PlayStation Network

A global internet outage has seen the world's biggest websites crash almost instantly, Sky News reports.

Internet users were faced with unexpected error messages when visiting sites such as the UK Government website, Reddit, Twitch, Amazon, HBO Max, CNN, Etsy, and Paypal, according to tracking website Down Detector.

Many of the world’s biggest news outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, New Statesman, and Financial Times were also affected by the blunder.

While some sites are completely down, others have been reported to not working properly. Twitter users noted that the social media site loaded, but emojis and some images used in tweets did not load.

iNews reports that Facebook is among the websites that did not get affected by tech issues. Websites that were affected displayed error messages that said: "Error 503 Service Unavailable".

Fastly, one of the world’s major CDNs, reported a major outage across its global network, which is believed to have caused the outage.

On its "service status" page, Fastly said that the issue was with its CDN, or content delivery network.

That is a set of servers distributed across the world that serve up the content that make up websites, with the aim of ensuring that data is sent as quickly as possible.

This means a set of servers distributed globally serve up the content that make up websites, so any issues with CDNs instantly send websites offline.

The US firm has confirmed it is "currently investigating potential impact to performance with our CDN services". Two further updates posted since only made clear that the company is "continuing to investigate this issue".

On its own status page, Reddit pinned the problems on "one of our service providers". It also said it was "currently investigating".

In a tweet, a UK Government spokesman said: "We are aware of the issues with Gov.uk which means that users may not be able to access the site.

"This is a wider issue affecting a number of other non-government sites. We are investigating this as a matter of urgency."

Featured image credit: fabio camandona / Alamy

Facebook has revealed the reason behind its chaotic six-hour crash on Monday.

On October 4, social media users were forced to turn to Twitter after Facebook - along with the company's other platforms Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp - all went offline.

From approximately 11:30AM to 5:30PM (EST), users were left unable to post, like, comment, share, message, or refresh their newsfeeds - leaving many people stuck for something to do while on the toilet.

The outage quickly became an online joke, and with people flooding to Twitter for some social interaction, we were treated to tweets like this:

And this:

Fortunately, once Facebook had sorted its issues, they were able to provide a reasoning behind the outage with its users. Writing in a blog post on Monday evening, officials for the company stated that the mass blackout was caused by a "faulty configuration change".

The post - titled 'Update about the October 4th outage' - read:

"Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication.

"This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt."

The post also stressed that no "user data was compromised" during the outage, and added: "We apologize to all those affected, and we’re working to understand more about what happened today so we can continue to make our infrastructure more resilient."

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, also issued an apology for the "disruption", writing in a post of his own:

"Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now. Sorry for the disruption today -- I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about."

With the outage in our rearview mirrors, I guess the only thing left to do is enjoy these memes of the Facebook outage (no surprise, they're all from Twitter):

That reminds me, I better reactivate my Bebo account... just in case.

Featured image credit: Sipa US / Alamy

WhatsApp has become our go-to messaging service and nowadays anyone who doesn't have it is considered a little out of the loop. You still text? Get out of here!

Allegedly used by up to one billion people every single day of the year, the app is now the world's most popular messaging service and it looks like nothing is going to stop it.

However, many users of the free-to-download service are due for a shock, given the fact that WhatsApp is soon to be no longer compatible with millions of smartphones.

The issue, destined to annoy many a WhatsApp user, is caused by a recent version 2.18.90 update, which removes support for some older devices. The company reportedly plans to stop support for all iPhones running iOS 7 by February, 2020, meaning that anyone who owns an iPhone 4 or an earlier version of the Apple phone will have to either buy a new device or simply give up their favourite messaging service.

Furthermore, anyone out there who owns a later iPhone will also be forced to update their device; if they started using Whatsapp on an iPhone running iOS 7, they will still be able to use the older version of the app until February 2020, when it will stop working for them altogether.

The official cut-off date is February 1; however, this does not necessarily mean that all the functions will be maintained until then, with reports claiming that some could disappear at any time without prior warning.

It's certainly not the first time that WhatsApp has dropped support for certain phones; last year, the company revoked support for Nokia Symbian S60 phones, and it will reportedly do the same for Nokia S40 handsets on December 31 2018.

In other WhatsApp news, fans of the app in the UK are allegedly being warned about a new scam. According to British newspaper, the Daily Express, Police in the UK are warning about messages claiming to be from someone who is "a friend of a friend".

Apparently, the "friend of a friend" - often named Olivia-  normally states they have got a new number as they begin the conversation. If the WhatsApp user questions their identity, they offer to send a picture of themselves; when they do, it is a hyperlink that, when opened, shows pornographic images.

[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/HaltonBrookPol/status/1037059831725735936]]

Cheshire Constabulary’s Halton Brook Police have taken to Twitter to warn parents about the threat, claiming the scam targets children. The user behind the account posted: "I have been made aware of worrying WhatsApp messages being sent from a number registered overseas. The sender pretends to be a friend with a new number but then sends a pornographic picture. If your kids use the App please have a chat with them & check their messages #HereForYou".

Stay safe out there, WhatsApp users.