Facebook services back online after worldwide outage
San Francisco: Facebook said it was "back at 100 per cent" Wednesday evening after an outage on all of its services affected users in various parts of the world.
Online monitoring service DownDetector reported earlier the outage began around 1200 GMT and affected Facebook as well as its Instagram and WhatsApp services.
"The issue has since been resolved and we should be back at 100% for everyone," the company tweeted at 0006 GMT Thursday, adding they were sorry for "any inconvenience."
A Facebook spokesperson, also speaking on behalf of Instagram and WhatsApp, explained that a "routine maintenance operation" accidentally triggered a bug that made it difficult for users to upload or send photos and videos, US media reported.
#Facebookdown and #instagramdown were trending on Twitter as users around the world reported these apps were not functioning.
According to DownDetector, thousands of users around the world were reporting outages, with Europe and North America most impacted. Both individual users as well as businesses and organizations were affected.
"Yes, we are affected by #instagramdown, too," the CIA tweeted during the outage.
"No, we didn't cause it. No, we can't fix yours. Did you try turning it off and back on again?" Earlier this year, an outage lasting as long as 24 hours that hit Facebook services was blamed on a "server configuration change."
The March 13 outage was believed to be the worst ever for the internet giant, which reaches an estimated 2.7 billion people with its core social network, Instagram and messaging applications.
The company did not immediately respond to an AFP query on Wednesday's outage.
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Three arrested in Gurugram for aiding Chinese cyber fraud syndicate
Gurugram (PTI): The Gurugram Cyber Police has arrested three men for allegedly providing calling support to a Chinese fraud syndicate, officials said on Wednesday.
According to the officials, a 20-port physical SIM box and a laptop were seized from them. These arrests come after a woman from Nagaland was held in connection with the same case.
The arrested accused have been identified as Karma (32) from Nagaland, and Lobsang Tsultim (33) and Ngawang Gyaltsen (35), both from Himachal Pradesh. Karma and Tsultim were arrested on February 14. Gyaltsen was intercepted on February 16 near Majnu Ka Tila in Delhi while attempting to flee to Nepal.
Police said the accused, during questioning, revealed that they were using SIM boxes to facilitate fraudulent calls targeting Indian citizens.
Karma and Lobsang Tsultim admitted to installing virtual SIM boxes in Gurugram on the instructions of a Chinese national named Tsega, they said.
These setups, which included 20 mobile phones, were capable of making over 20,000 calls a day. Tsega, allegedly used an application to contact Indian citizens for various crimes, including gaming and investment fraud, they said.
Tsultim and Gyaltsen were born in China and have lived in India as refugees for 15 years. Fluent in Chinese and Taiwanese, they communicated with Tsega via WeChat, a platform banned in India since 2020, they added.
ACP Cyber Priyanshu Dewan said the three accused were produced in court on Wednesday and have been sent to judicial custody.
"We are working to identify others involved in the network," he added.
