Snapchat faces global outage, major disruption reported in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Snapchat, the widely used multimedia messaging platform, suffered a major global outage on Sunday, disrupting services for users in Pakistan and several other countries. Many were unable to send or receive messages, photos or videos.

Monitoring service Downdetector reported a surge in user complaints in regions including Pakistan, the UK and France. About 57% of affected users said they were unexpectedly logged out, while 24% faced problems sharing content and 18% had difficulty uploading media.

The outage began early Sunday, with complaints particularly from Pakistani cities such as Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Peshawar. Users across Punjab and Sindh expressed their frustration on the social media platform, according to Downdetector data.

So far, Snapchat has not provided any official explanation for the outage. However, some tech experts believe the issue could be linked to server-side glitches or bugs related to recent updates.

Notably, many users found that the app worked when accessed through a virtual private network (VPN), leading to speculation that the issue could be regional or tied to specific server routes.

A heat map from Downdetector illustrated the global scale of the disruption, showing that the problem is not limited to just one geographic area. The platform, which only identifies outages when user reports exceed the usual threshold, confirmed an unusually high number of complaints.

In Pakistan, 53% of users cited access issues, 28% experienced difficulties sharing content, and 19% reported problems uploading.