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Tag: Internet Outage

  • Verizon offers customers a $20 credit after Wednesday’s widespread outage

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    Verizon on Thursday said it’s offering a $20 credit to customers affected by a widespread service outage on Wednesday. 

    Verizon subscribers complained that the outage limited their ability to use their mobile devices, preventing them from making calls or completing online transactions that require a wireless network.

    To appease frustrated subscribers, the wireless provider said it’s giving those customers a $20 credit.

    “Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence our customers expect and that we expect of ourselves,” Verizon said in a statement to CBS News. “To help provide some relief to those affected, we are giving customers a $20 account credit that can be easily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app to accept. On average, this covers multiple days of service. Our business customers will be contacted directly about their credits.”

    Verizon added that the “credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging our customers’ time and showing that this matters to us.”

    The company said that while the outage has been resolved, customers who continue to experience issues should restart their devices to reconnect to the network. 

    Verizon did not indicate how many customers were affected, but Downdetector, which tracks such outages, showed that up to 180,000 users across the U.S. reported issues with the mobile network on Wednesday. 

    The cause of the outage remains unclear. 

    Edited by

    Aimee Picchi

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  • Shopify outage disrupts some merchants on Cyber Monday

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    Shopify services were temporarily interrupted as an outage at the e-commerce platform disrupted retailers on Cyber Monday, one of the busiest online shopping days of the entire year.

    Thousands of Shopify users reported problems with the platform, hindering their ability to do business. Outage reports peaked at 11 a.m. EDT at around 4,000 before tapering off, according to Downdector, a website that tracks online outages.

    Shopify said on its status page that users may experience issues logging in or accessing point-of-sale systems, the equipment used to process in-person transactions.

    The company said Monday evening it was dealing with a “system degradation” that had been “mitigated” and that it would continue to monitor the system’s recovery.

    “We kept checkout and storefronts online, but access to admin interfaces was temporarily unavailable for some merchants,” Shopify said, adding the problem “briefly extended” to point of service but that issue was “quickly resolved.”

    Merchants use Shopify’s tech to build online stores, process payments, arrange shipping, manage inventory and handle other retail transactions, while the company also provides point-of-sales hardware. 

    Shopify said in a 2:31 p.m. EDT alert on its status page that it had “found and fixed an issue with our login authentication flow” and that it was “seeing signs of recovery.”

    The Canada-based company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

    It’s unfortunate timing for Shopify, as Cyber Monday is expected to drive a large number of online sales. Adobe Analytics predicts consumers will spend a record $14.2 billion online, a 6.3% increase from last year.

    Edited by

    Alain Sherter

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  • Here’s what experts say the Amazon Web Services outage reveals about the fragility of the cloud

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    The 15-hour disruption to Amazon Web Services, a cloud-based computing service, on Monday shook internet users around the world, disrupting everything from travel to financial transactions — and underscoring the fragility of a system reliant on only a handful of tech giants.

    Monday’s problems at Amazon Web Services, or AWS, spawned 11 million total outage reports, with 3 million reports stemming from U.S. users, Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages, said on Facebook.

    While other cloud providers support the world’s businesses — including Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure — AWS has the largest foothold in the market. Since it debuted in 2006, the company has grown to control 38% of the cloud computing infrastructure market, according to research and advisory firm Gartner. 

    Experts say Monday’s outage reveals the vulnerabilities of a system where a small number of companies provide such a large chunk of the internet’s backbone.

    “[The] outage is a stark reminder of the massive ‘concentration risk’ the global economy has accepted by building on a handful of cloud providers,” Dave McCarthy, who leads global research for cloud services at the International Data Corporation, told CBS News.

    AWS’ rolodex of customers include government departments, universities and businesses, and platforms such as Venmo, Netflix and Snapchat. 

    “Frankly, many customers may have been unaware that a service they used relied upon AWS and are only learning that now, due to system failures,” said Craig Shue, a professor and the head of the computer science department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

    As Shue explained, companies that are not technology-centric may seek out a cloud service like AWS to host their web servers and databases, allowing them to focus on their day-to-day operations. Amazon, meanwhile,  handles the more technical aspects such as server maintenance and responses to fluctuations in customer demand, he added.

    Amazon declined to comment directly on the incident, instead sharing a statement from their website published on Oct. 20. 

    How the AWS outage started

    The outage started Monday morning in Northern Virginia, home to AWS’ oldest and biggest cloud computing hub in the U.S. AWS refers to the cluster of data centers in Virginia as US-EAST-1. The company also has cloud computing hubs in California, Ohio and Oregon.

    According to expert accounts and Amazon’s own explanation, the issue was partially tied to AWS’ domain name system (DNS), which is called DynamoDB. As Shue explained, this is the part of the internet that takes domain names like Amazon.com and converts them to IP addresses, numerical labels that identify locations on the internet. 

    The service can be used to distribute traffic to multiple servers to make things faster, Shue said.

    “It is akin to waiting in a checkout line that then splits off to multiple cashier lanes,” Shue explained. “A staff member can direct the customer at the front of the line to the first available server that can handle the job.”

    This function was disrupted on Monday, leading to a backlog of server requests without anything to route them. It’s still unclear how the disruption began, experts said. 

    For people on the ground, this meant they were unable to carry out simple web-based functions like checking their flight time on an airline app or sending a payment on Venmo. 

    While the issue started in the eastern U.S. region, its effects were global. Experts say it’s difficult to quantify the impact in dollar figures. McCarthy, however, noted that it appears to be one of the most significant outages in recent years.

    Amazon said that the issue was resolved around 6 p.m. EDT on Monday, or more than 15 hours after the company first reported a problem on the AWS Health Dashboard, where it tracks service disruptions.

    “This wasn’t a minor glitch; it was a cascading failure originating in US-EAST-1, the very nerve center of AWS, which took down everything from gaming and social media to critical financial and educational platforms,” he said.

    Will the outage impact AWS?

    While the incident may have sparked a small reckoning with cloud services, it’s not expected to shake up the landscape too much, experts told CBS News.

    McCarthy doesn’t expect the outage to lead to a mass exodus of AWS customers, but he said it could compel companies to diversify their cloud services so they’re not reliant on a single provider. That way if one goes down, the company can still keep some operations going.

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  • How to prepare for major online outages

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    The massive Amazon cloud computing outage on Monday took down websites and disrupted internet service for hours globally. CBS News business analyst Jill Schlesinger breaks down how people can protect themselves for incidents like the outage in the digital age.

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  • Amazon cloud outage disrupts services, exposes internet’s weak points – WTOP News

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    The outage, which began at Amazon’s Northern Virginia centers, caused widespread disruptions. An assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech said it reminded us of how dependent we are on a few tech giants.

    A major cloud outage Monday disrupted services across the globe, offering a reminder of how dependent we are on just a few tech giants.

    “Amazon Web Services is one of the foundations of the modern internet,” said Shaddi Hasan, assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech. “When Amazon breaks, that takes down so many of the services that we use every day.”

    Hasan said running a cloud infrastructure is expensive and complex, which is why only a few companies lead the pack.

    “There’s only a handful of these companies that run infrastructure at that scale — Amazon, Microsoft, Google and a few others,” he said.

    The outage, which began early Monday in Amazon’s Northern Virginia centers, caused widespread disruptions. Services affected ranged from social media platforms to banking apps.

    Hasan said “the cloud” is essentially a network of massive data centers or warehouses filled with computers that run the services the public relies on every day. Many of these are located in Northern Virginia, one of the world’s largest data center hubs.

    When it comes to cloud computing, there are only a few big players, Hasan said. “Unless you’re in the space, they can kind of be unseen giants to a lot of people. So much of our infrastructure depends on them.”

    He said businesses are faced with a tough choice that involves deciding to rely on a major cloud provider and risk being affected by outages, or build and maintain their own infrastructure. The latter is an option that’s often too costly and complex.

    Hasan also pointed out that the internet wasn’t always this centralized.

    He teaches his students about the early days of the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, more popularly known as ARPANET. It was the internet’s predecessor from the 1960s, and was designed to be resilient and even able to work around a nuclear attack.

    “But as time has gone on … centralization of the services that run on top of that infrastructure has kind of undermined some of that original ethos and spirit,” he said.

    And while outages like this may lead to improvements, Hasan doesn’t expect a major shift.

    “It’s hard to imagine a world where … they move away from that model,” he said.

    He said incidents like this highlight just how delicate the system has become: “It reminds us of the fragility of relying on just a few large providers.”

    And when things go wrong, fixing them isn’t easy.

    “These failures are rare, and when they happen, they’re quite complex to remediate,” Hasan said.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Mike Murillo

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  • Spotify temporarily goes down as thousands of users report outage

    Spotify temporarily goes down as thousands of users report outage

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    Spotify considered white noise ban


    Spotify considered banning white noise podcasts

    03:10

    Thousands of listeners were left without access to tunes and podcasts on Sunday after music streaming service Spotify was down temporarily on Sunday.

    More than 40,000 people reported outages with the music platform on downdetector.com, a website that allows users to report problems with popular apps and services. Reports started spiking around 10:45 a.m. ET.

    In Spotify’s desktop app, some users were greeted with the error message, “Something went wrong,” and attempts to play tracks were unsuccessful. Spotify’s phone app was also unresponsive to some users.

    Spotify wrote on X on Sunday afternoon, “We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!”

    Responding to the post, Spotify users complained about the outage disrupting workout routines and plans to stream a playlist at a child’s birthday party.

    About an hour later, the streaming service posted that everything was looking much better. The app appeared to be working normally.

    Millions of people use Spotify, which was the largest streaming service in 2023. The music platform reports having more than 626 million users, with 246 million subscribers.

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  • CrowdStrike says widespread disruptions were not the result of security incident or cyberattack

    CrowdStrike says widespread disruptions were not the result of security incident or cyberattack

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    A global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.

    Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

    The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing it.

    The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta.

    News outlets in Australia reported that airlines, telecommunications providers and banks, and media broadcasters were disrupted as they lost access to computer systems. Airlines in the U.K., Europe and India reported problems and some New Zealand banks said they were offline.

    Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

    The company did not respond to a request for comment. It did not explain the cause of the outage further.

    CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz posted on social media platform X that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

    He said: “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

    New Zealand’s acting prime minister, David Seymour, said on X that officials in the country were “moving at pace to understand the potential impacts” of the global problem.

    “I have not currently received any reporting to indicate these issues are related to malicious cyber security activity,” Seymour wrote. The issue was causing “inconvenience” for the public and businesses, he added.

    Israel’s Cyber Directorate that it was among the places affected by the global outages, attributing them to a problem with Crowdstrike. The outage also hit the country’s post offices and hospitals, according to the ministries of communication and health.

    Meanwhile, major disruptions reported by airlines and airports grew.

    In the U.S., the FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded. Travelers at Los Angeles International Airport slept on a jetway floor, using backpacks and other luggage for pillows, due to a delayed United flight to Dulles International Airport early on Friday.

    Airlines, railways and television stations in the United Kingdom were being disrupted by the computer issues. The budget airline Ryanair, train operators TransPennine Express and Govia Thameslink Railway, as well as broadcaster Sky News are among those affected.

    “We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a global third party IT outage which is out of our control,” Ryanair said. “We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time.”

    Edinburgh Airport said the system outage meant waiting times were longer than usual. London’s Stansted Airport said some airline check-in services were being completed manually, but flights were still operating.

    Widespread problems were reported at Australian airports, where lines grew and some passengers were stranded as online check-in services and self-service booths were disabled. Passengers in Melbourne queued for more than an hour to check in, although flights were still operating.

    Airline operations in India were disrupted, affecting thousands.

    The privately-owned IndiGo airlines told the passengers on X that the Microsoft outage on Friday impacted airline operations in India, inconveniencing thousands of passengers.

    Several airlines made statements on X saying that they were following manual check-in and boarding processes and warned of delays due to technical problems.

    Hong Kong’s Airport Authority said in a statement that the outage was affecting some airlines at the city’s airport and they had switched to manual check-in.

    Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport said on its website that the outage was having a “major impact on flights” to and from the busy European hub. The outage came on one of the busiest days of the year for the airport, at the start of many people’s summer vacations.

    In Germany, Berlin Airport said Friday morning that “due to a technical fault, there will be delays in check-in.” It said that flights were suspended until 10 a.m. (0800GMT), without giving details, German news agency dpa reported.

    Zurich Airport, the busiest in Switzerland, suspended landings on Friday morning but said flights headed there that were already in the air were still allowed to land. It said that several airlines, handling agents and other companies at the airport were affected, and that check-in had to be done manually in some cases, but that the airport’s own systems were running.

    At Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport, some US-bound flights had posted delays, while others were unaffected.

    Australia appeared to be severely affected by the issue. Outages reported on the site DownDetector included the banks NAB, Commonwealth and Bendigo, and the airlines Virgin Australia and Qantas, as well as internet and phone providers such as Telstra.

    Hospitals in Britain and Germany also reported problems.

    Several practices within the National Health Service in England reported that the outage had hit their clinical computer system that contains medical records and is used for scheduling.

    “We have no access to patient clinical records so are unable to book appointments or provide information,” Church Lane Surgery in Brighouse in Northern England said on the social media platform X. “This is a national problem and is being worked on as a high priority.”

    The NHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    In northern Germany, the Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital, which has branches in Kiel and Luebeck, said it had canceled all elective surgery scheduled for Friday, but patient and emergency care were unaffected.

    News outlets in Australia – including the ABC and Sky News – were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels, and reported sudden shutdowns of Windows-based computers. Some news anchors broadcast live online from dark offices, in front of computers showing “blue screens of death.”

    In South Africa, at least one major bank said it was experiencing “nationwide service disruptions” as customers reported they were unable to make payments using their bank cards at grocery stores and gas stations.

    The New Zealand banks ASB and Kiwibank said their services were down.

    An X user posted a screenshot of an alert from the company Crowdstrike that said the company was aware of “reports of crashes on Windows hosts” related to its Falcon Sensor platform. The alert was posted on a password-protected Crowdstrike site and could not be verified. Crowdstrike did not respond to a request for comment.

    Copyright © 2024 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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    AP

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  • Microsoft users around the world report widespread outages

    Microsoft users around the world report widespread outages

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    7/18: CBS Evening News

    19:56

    Banks, airlines, TV stations and health systems in countries around the world that rely on Microsoft’s 365 apps reported widespread outages Friday. Thousands of flights and train services were cancelled in the U.S. and Europe, and their were disruptions to many other public and retail services.

    Microsoft 365 said on social media that it was “investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services” and that things were improving as the company worked to “reroute the affected traffic to healthy infrastructure.”

    American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines said all pending flight departures were grounded. American Airlines said this was due to “a technical issue with CrowdStrike” that it said was impacting multiple airlines, and that the company was in contact with its planes currently in flight.

    CrowdStrike is a global cybersecurity firm. When the Reuters news agency called CrowdStrike’s technical support line on Friday, a pre-recorded message said the company was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft systems related to its Falcon sensor. CBS News reached out to CrowdStrike for comment but has not yet received a reply.

    dubai-microsoft-airport-outage.jpg
    People wait at check-in for a flight operated by Indian carrier IndiGo, amid a global IT outage, at an airport in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, July 19, 2024, in a  still image obtained from a social media video by Reuters.

    MarketWizarddd via X/via REUTERS


    In Europe, Lufthansa and SAS Airlines reported disruptions. Switzerland’s largest airport, in Zurich, said planes were not being allowed to land, according to CBS News partner network BBC News.

    Hospitals in Germany said they were cancelling elective surgeries on Friday, and doctors in the U.K. said they were having issues accessing their online booking system.

    Britain’s Sky News and the BBC’s TV network aimed at children were both off the air on Friday.

    This is a developing news story and will be updated.

    Haley Ott

    Haley Ott is the CBS News Digital international reporter, based in the CBS News London bureau.

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  • Microsoft Teams services are down, as thousands of users report issues

    Microsoft Teams services are down, as thousands of users report issues

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    Microsoft Teams is experiencing a service outage that has blocked access and limited features for some users. 

    The outage began Friday at around 11 a.m. Eastern Time, with reports of technical issues spiking in the afternoon and peaking shortly before 2 p.m. More than 14,500 service incidents were reported by then, outage tracker DownDetector’s data shows. By 5:44 p.m., the number of reports fell to a little less than 1,100, according to the tracker.

    Microsoft did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment. 

    According to DownDetector, 67% of the user-reported issues involved the Teams app, 25% are service connection-related problems and 8% are website issues. Users complained they were unable to use the service, citing messaging delays and problems with graphic displays. 

    Although it was unclear how many users were affected by the outages, Microsoft was deluged with complaints on social media. 

    In an X post on Friday, Microsoft 365 Status, the company’s office account for service incidents, said it identified “a networking issue impacting a portion of the Teams service” and that it has moved the affected processes to a backup system. 

    The company added that it was making headway restoring Teams service in Europe and the Middle East. Microsoft also said it was working to protect its network in North and South America as it monitors the outages, adding that it was optimizing traffic patterns and applying configuration changes to reduce customer impact as quickly as possible. 

    —With reporting by the Associated Press.

    Elizabeth Napolitano


    elizabeth-napolitano-cbsmoneywatch-cropped.jpg

    Elizabeth Napolitano is a freelance reporter at CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and technology news. She also writes for CoinDesk. Before joining CBS, she interned at NBC News’ BizTech Unit and worked on The Associated Press’ web scraping team.

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