WEBSITES affected by a worldwide internet outage appear to be gradually coming back online.
Fastly, which has been widely reported as the source of the problem, updated its service status page, saying: “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.”
Though the problem is being fixed many users have reported slow loading times.
The outage affected media websites like the Guardian, Financial Times and Independent while the official Government website was also down.
Websites shut down by the outage will show up with an 'Error 503' message.
Read more: Who is responsible for the worldwide internet outage?
The official GOV.UK Twitter account said: “We are aware of the issues with http://GOV.UK which means that users may not be able to access the site. This is a wider issue affecting a number of other non-government sites. We are investigating this as a matter of urgency.”
The Fastly issue reported to be behind the global internet outage was probably due to a physical issue rather than software related, a software testing expert has told the PA news agency.
“Given the nature of this kind of technology, it’s probably not a software issue,” said Adam Leon Smith, from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.
“It’s more likely to be a physical issue or a hardware failure somewhere.”
He added: “Some of the websites will have removed their dependency on Fastly in order to get themselves back online and so I think within a few hours things should be ticking along nicely again.”
Financial expert Martin Lewis, who founded Money Saving Expert, urged internet users to be aware of "shyster sites" as some fraudsters take advantage of the outage.
Writing on Twitter, Mr Lewis said: "WARNING: With http://gov.uk website being down right now, be v careful if renewing passports, GHICs, applying for marriage tax allowance, driving licence etc.
"Top of search will be ads for shyster sites which look like the real thing yet charge unnecessarily."
WARNING: With https://t.co/VZqFz6HC6z website being down right now, be v careful if renewing passports, GHICs, applying for marriage tax allowance, driving licence etc.
— Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) June 8, 2021
Top of search will be ads for shyster sites which look like the real thing yet charge unnecessarily.
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