Amazon’s cloud services unit, AWS, experienced an outage today, causing service disruptions for several popular websites and applications as well as connectivity issues for many companies around the world.

Snapchat, Reddit, Roblox and Lloyds Bank apps were among those that saw thousands of reports from users reporting problems – with Downdetector, the platform outage tracker, saying it had more than 6.5 million reports worldwide, affecting more than 1,000 companies, the BBC reports.

Amazon says it has fixed the problem, which occurred in the US at the heart of its cloud computing operations in Northern Virginia, and services are recovering. However, according to the BBC some are reporting that although Snapchat is working again they have lost all their friends on the app.

Although the AWS outage appears to have been mostly resolved, experts say its scale and impact have highlighted the risk of many companies relying heavily on a single, dominant provider for critical infrastructure.

The AWS outage is the first major internet disruption since last year’s CrowdStrike breach that affected technology systems at hospitals, banks and airports around the world.

It is noted that AWS provides on-demand computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals.

Banks also have problems

Also, UK bank Lloyds, as well as its Halifax and Bank of Scotland subsidiaries, faced thousands of reports of outages, according to Downdetector.

Lloyds has since confirmed that the problems affecting it and its subsidiaries, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, are related to the current problems with Amazon Web Services.

“You may have seen reports of issues with Amazon Web Services affecting a number of websites and apps across the UK today”he said in a post on X. “We know this is affecting some of our services at the moment. We are sorry about that. Please be patient as we investigate this.”

People reported being unable to log into online and mobile banking applications, while there were also reports on social media that some people have had their card payments declined.

Complaints have been coming in since early this morning and have gradually started to increase, with data from Down Detector showing thousands of reports from users.

Amazon.com, PrimeVideo and Alexa also experienced problems, according to Downdetector.

In detail, the applications that presented problems:

  • 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

Even the website of the UK tax authority, HMRC, appears to have been affected.