Many data-driven companies struggle with tracking anomalous behavior in their KPIs, let alone their more granular metrics, because traditional BI tools just can’t keep pace with big data. Manual processes, whether monitoring dashboards or setting static thresholds, often leads to missed incidents or prolongs time to resolution.
Many incidents get resolved before they make headlines. But there are plenty that go on to wreak havoc on users and damage the brand. We track glitches impacting the world’s most prominent companies to underscore the importance of anomaly detection – and as a warning against denial. Because if it can happen to the world’s biggest brands, it can certainly happen to you.
Here are the incidents that took their toll in May:
Firefox Extensions Broken
A glitch spontaneously disabled all Firefox extensions for a few hours. Mozilla’s Bugzilla bug tracker first reported the sudden failure early in the morning Pacific Time on May 4. The patch was released a few hours later.
National Australian Bank IT Glitch
The National Australian Bank experienced an online banking outage that blocked some customers from accessing their accounts for a few hours. The glitch was caused by the accidental imposition of a block to stop fraudulent transactions.
Vodafone Network Outage
For more than two days, Vodafone customers in Mumbai complained about a network outage. Users complained of no service across social media in Borivali, Mira Road, Bhyander, Bandra, and more.
Major EA Servers Downtime
Over a weekend, the EA servers were hit by a major outage that lasted for more than eight hours and affected thousands of FIFA 19 players, as well as customers of other popular game titles. The error was due to “connectivity” issues.
Google Ads Bug
For days, Google Ads dealt with a bug in their reporting software where monthly reports did not show the correct data and the reporting interfaces did not show up in the Google Ads app or Google Ads Editor.
Apple iTunes Store and Mac App Store Outage
For a few hours there was an outage affecting the App Store, iTunes Store, and Mac App Store. A small number of users were unable to access or make purchases on any of the digital platforms.
BMW CarPlay Subscription Broken
An extended ConnectedDrive outage caused the BMW CarPlay subscription to not work for several days. Customers had no access to CarPlay or other Connected Drive features for nearly a week.
Second Apple Outage
For the second time in a week, customers were unable to make purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, Apple Books, or Mac App Store due to three concurrent outages.
WhatsApp Breached
A cybersecutiry breach of WhatsApp left users vulnerable to malicious spyware being downloaded and installed on their smartphones. It affected customers with both iPhone and Android devices – more than 1.5 billion users.
Instagram Crash
Instagram experienced a worldwide outage where new content could not load on the site correctly and the latest stories were lost. The crash lasted for approximately an hour and caused thousands of complaints.
Virgin Mobile Network Outage
Virgin Mobile suffered a major service outage across the UK. Hundreds of users took to Twitter to complain about the inability to make calls or texts.
NAPLAN Glitch
Technical glitches caused thousands of children across 400 schools in Australia to have to retake their NAPLAN tests. The glitch causes ongoing dropouts, lags, difficulties logging in, and problems inputting answers.
Sabre Outage
Sabre, a travel-technology provider, experienced glitch that prevented some Canadian airline travelers from checking in for their flights. The problem originated with CenturyLink.
13-Hour Virgin Network Outage
Virgin Mobile customers in the UK suffered through a 13-hour technical issue where users could not make calls, send texts, or use mobile data for most of the day. The result will be a small refund for customers who were affected.
Salesforce Outage
Salesforce customers in the U.S. and Western Europe experienced a major issue with their service. Customers were unable to access the software if they also used Pardot marketing automation software. More than 3,262 customers reported the outage.
Asana Down
Asana faced an outage where users were unable to access the platform and took to social media to complain. It was all due to a “partial API outage.”
EE Network Crashed for 8 Hours
Customers in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Nottingham, and other locations across the UK complained of an EE outage that caused intermittent problems making calls on 4G. The outage affected thousands of users.
Virgin Media Down
Virgin Media stopped working for a few hours, leaving users unable to get on the internet or watch TV. The outage lasted long enough to make some customers eligible for compensation due to their lost service.
AOL Mail Outage
An outage caused AOL Mail users to lose access to their accounts for a few hours. Users were unable to login to any of their accounts and were officially suggested to re-install the AOL mail app to fix the problem after an update.
Google Bug Causes Password Compromise
Google’s policy is to store user passwords with cryptographic hashes to ensure security. However, since 2005, a bug in the system caused some passwords to be stored unhashed and in plain text for 14 years. The bug affected paid business users and their accounts.
At Anodot, we know that real-time anomaly detection is essential to ensuring seamless performance and protecting revenue. Discover how other companies are avoiding glitches using our patented machine learning platform.
Written by Anodot
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