Thousands of web users across the world have experienced issues due to an Amazon server outage.

Several Amazon services including Prime Video, its namesake website, and applications that use Amazon Web Services (AWS) have been hit by problems.

Amazon said the outage was likely due to issues related to the application programming interface (API), which is a set of
protocols for building and integrating application software.

Users report outage on social media apps and internet services including Snapchat and Spotify

“We are experiencing API and console issues in the US-EAST-1 Region. We have identified the root cause and we are actively working towards recovery,” Amazon said in a report on its service health dashboard.

“This issue is affecting the global console landing page, which is also hosted in US-EAST-1,” it added.

The dashboard showed “increased error rates” had been identified in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Several websites use AWS, including Ring security cameras, mobile banking app Chime, Tinder, and Disney+, with Downdetector showing issues had been recorded with all of them.

The site, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources, showed 1,191 problems with Amazon Web Services were raised just after 4pm in the UK.

However, by 7.25pm that number had fallen to 258.

In the US, it showed 11,347 issues had been recorded at around the same time and by 7.30pm that figure was sitting at nearly 4,000.

In June, websites including Reddit, Amazon, CNN, PayPal, Spotify, Al Jazeera Media Network, and the New York Times were hit by a widespread hour-long outage linked to US-based content delivery network provider Fastly, a smaller rival of AWS.

In July, Amazon experienced a disruption in its online stores’ service, which lasted for nearly two hours and affected more than 38,000 users.