Major breakdown of Amazon services: Zoom, Duolingo and Snapchat, among dozens of applications that no longer work

Many of the world's biggest apps, including Snapchat, Duolingo and Roblox, have had problems working, apparently due to an issue affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS), the BBC reported on Monday.

AWS is the cloud computing division of the American technology giant, and its infrastructure supports the websites and platforms of millions of companies.

Many of the applications on smart phones actually run using AWS data centers.

In an update on its service status page highlighting potential issues, the company said it could confirm “significant error rates for requests” to one of its service access points in the US-EAST-1 region.

Problems with AWS services were also reported by users in Romania

The reference site Downdetector, which monitors in real time the technical problems of the most famous sites and applications, shows that problems have also been reported by users in Romania.

It's hard to say exactly how many apps have been affected since Monday, but according to complaints recorded by Downdetector, the list includes:

• Snapchat;
• Zoom;
• Roblox;
• Clash Royale;
• My Fitness Pal;
• Life360;
• Clash of Clans;
• Fortnite;
• Canvas;
• Wordle;
• Signal;
• Coinbase;
• Duolingo;
• Slack;
• Smartsheet;
• Pokemon Go;
• Epic Games;
• PlayStation Network;
• Platoon;
• Rocket League, and many others.

The BBC notes that some banks have also been affected in the UK. Lloyds, as well as its Halifax and Bank of Scotland subsidiaries, are all facing thousands of complaints about service disruptions, according to Downdetector.

People have complained of being unable to log into their internet banking and mobile banking apps, and there are also reports on social media that some people have had their card payments declined.

The BBC notes, however, that it could not independently verify this.