Microsoft Outlook presents instability on Thursday, the 12th

The workflow of millions of offices worldwide suddenly stopped on Thursday due to a failure in the email service servers for Outlook and the Microsoft 365 service from technology giant Microsoft. This technical glitch caused difficulties for thousands of users when sending, receiving emails, and logging into their accounts.

According to the DownDetector platform, which tracks the status of online services, the issue with Outlook began around 1 PM Eastern Time. Soon, the number of complaints sharply increased, peaking when over 100,000 messages related to Outlook were registered.

Similarly, more than 15,000 users reported problems with Microsoft 365. Microsoft confirmed this outage on the social network X and stated that its team was investigating the situation.

Initially, it seemed the problem was limited to the US, but later the company admitted that its impact could be global. Microsoft stated: 'While we work to mitigate the impact, we confirm that this issue may affect connectivity to Microsoft 365 services for users in any region.'

The company specified that an excessive load increased on part of its infrastructure in several regions, leading to connection issues. To balance the load, Microsoft began redistributing network traffic across its global infrastructure.

During this outage, the Microsoft status page (status.cloud.microsoft), which was supposed to provide information, also encountered a loading error. Nevertheless, the company notified users about the possibility of receiving updates through the Admin Center using codes EX1550543 and MO1550821. At the time of publication, engineers continued to work on a full resolution of the issue.

The Outlook service is experiencing instability this Thursday, November 12th, which has complicated users' access to their email inboxes. Microsoft confirmed that it is conducting an investigation into connection issues in Exchange Online, a service integrated with Microsoft 365.

According to the company itself, the failure may be caused by an overload in parts of the infrastructure across various regions. Although the first reports of problems were noted in the Americas, there is a possibility that users in any other area may also be affected.

Microsoft is actively working to reduce the impact of this situation and provides updates in the Microsoft 365 admin center, using codes EX1550543 and MO1550821. Regarding initial reports, it was mentioned that the company was investigating access issues to Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas.

On online service monitoring platforms, such as DownDetector, the registration of user complaints began to increase around 2:45 PM on the current day.

Users have reported difficulties when trying to make Pix transactions or access banking applications, indicating generalized instability in digital services. The website Downdetector, which monitors failures in digital platforms, registered problems with gov.br, Banco do Brasil, the Federal Revenue Service, and Pix, in addition to reports of failures on WhatsApp.

These records of instability began around 8 am. On social media, several users expressed their difficulties, specifically mentioning the inability to log into accounts or perform Pix transactions at Banco do Brasil.

One hypothesis raised for the occurrence of simultaneous failures across multiple platforms is a possible defect in cloud computing services. Large providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, are used by companies and public bodies to host systems and process data.

When these infrastructure services face problems, the effect can extend to several platforms at the same time, even if they do not have a direct connection. However, as of now, it has not been confirmed that a cloud failure is responsible for the reported instabilities.