Family of apps, including Instagram and Messenger, encountering problems but company spokesman says it is not a cyber-attack

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Facebook has been suffering from outages across the world since around 12pm ET (4pm GMT) Wednesday.

All four of the company’s main applications – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger – were encountering problems, according to Downdetector.com. The outages appeared to be concentrated in the Americas and Europe.

“We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps,” spokesman Tom Parnell said by email. “We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”

Parnell subsequently added: “We’re focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.” A distributed denial of service attack is a type of cyber-attack in which a perpetrator can flood a website or platform with so much virtual traffic that it shuts down.

Facebook (@facebook) We're focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.

According to Downdector.com, the outages started in parts of the US, including the east and west coast, parts of Europe and in Australia. Users in New Zealand also reported problems.

Both Facebook’s desktop site and app appeared to be affected. Some users saw a message that said Facebook was down for “required maintenance”.

Facebook did not say what was causing the outages, which were still occurring as of 2.15pm ET, or which regions were affected.

On Wednesday, Google was also hit by outages around the world. Users reported issues with Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts and Google Maps for several hours.

Naturally, social media users voiced their concerns via Facebook’s rival, Twitter.

George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are down. But I hear MySpace is rocking right now.