WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook down for users

Thousands of users on Monday reported that they were unable to access the services WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. Social media users took to Twitter to report that they were unable to access the services of the aforementioned sites.

Downdetector.com, a website that tracks issues related to traffic on major websites, also saw a spike in number of reports which confirmed that a large number of people are unable to access WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.  

More than 20,000 people have reported that the WhatsApp is not working for them. The web.whatsapp.com is also displaying this error message - 5xx Server Error. Instagram is also showing the same - 5xx Server Error message - message. 

The Facebook website shows an error message “Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can.”

The WhatsApp messaging app is unable to send or receive messages while Instagram and Facebook's messaging platforms are also facing an outage. 

News agencies Reuters and AFP have confirmed that the outage is faced by users worldwide. The outage has impacted potentially tens of millions of users. 

Candid Wüest, Acronis's VP of Cyber Protection Research, said the outage may have happened due to issues with the BGP or DNS protocol.

“While there’s no confirmation on what caused the incident from Facebook Inc, it’s possible that the issue lies with the BGP or DNS protocol – which happen to be popular targets among cyber criminals…. Depending on what service is attacked – for example, if it’s a central authentication server shared between multiple brands, like in this case, then such a single outage can lead to multiple brands going offline. To be fair, we must note that most commonly such outages are caused by non-malicious actions – suspect it to be the case here too," Wüest said in an email statement. 

Netizens react with hilarious memes as as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp face

The website downdetector.com also showed that at least 87,000 people, till the time of writing this reported that they could not access Facebook. While social media users reported that they faced WhatsApp outage around 8.45pm (local time), downdetector.com showed that reports of Facebook outage increased around 8.57pm (local time). 

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp took to Twitter to release a statement regarding the outage. 

The messaging app issued a statement later saying it is working to fix the outage. “We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible,” WhatsApp said. 

Social media giant Facebook also issued a statement saying that all efforts are being taken to restore services affecting millions across the globe. “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” Facebook said. 

Instagram also posted a similar message via its official communications handle. “Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it! #instagramdown,” it said.