A major outage at Cloudflare, a leading internet infrastructure company, caused widespread disruption to popular websites including Bet365, Uber, Uber Eats, Wikipedia, and Paddy Power on Friday evening. Thousands of users in the UK and US reported issues on Downdetector, a platform that monitors online service problems.
Problems began shortly after 6.30pm GMT on February 20. Cloudflare confirmed it was investigating issues with its services and network, stating that users might experience errors or timeouts. The company provides security and performance services to around 20% of all websites worldwide, including major platforms like X, LinkedIn, and Zoom.
In the UK, Downdetector recorded 5,247 reports of issues with Bet365 at 6.57pm, while Uber Eats saw nearly 4,000 reports in the US by 1.40pm EDT. Bet365 acknowledged the issue on X, apologising and stating that its technical team was working to resolve it. This is not the first Cloudflare outage; similar incidents occurred in November and December.
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at ESET, previously highlighted the risks of relying on a single provider, noting that such outages expose a significant single point of failure in internet infrastructure. The outage affected users across the UK, with a Downdetector map showing ongoing disruptions.
