Facebook is down in Europe

Facebook is down in Europe. It's not clear how widespread the issue is, but I have heard reports from users being unable to access the social network from Albania, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Macedonia, Malta, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the U.K.

As I've been updating this article, it has become apparent that the issue goes beyond Europe. Users have also told me Facebook is not working in the Middle East and Africa, including the following countries: Abu Dhabi, Egypt, Ghana, Nepal, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, the UAE, and Zimbabwe.

If you're elsewhere in the world and can't access Facebook right now, please let me know. If you are in the above countries and can access Facebook, please let me know as well.

Some people in the listed countries can still access Facebook; it appears to depend on what Internet Service Provider (ISP) you are using. You may thus be able to access Facebook from a friend's place or from an Internet café. Try accessing it from your phone, as that also might work.

The root of the problem is likely a DNS issue, rather than a global routing or site availability problem. One user told me the company's two announced servers (glb1.facebook.com and glb2.facebook.com) are reachable but not answering requests. Another said he used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to change his IP address to a U.S. one and Facebook started working.

It's working just fine for me, but I'm located in Canada. At the time of writing, downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com says Facebook is working just fine: "It's just you. http://facebook.com is up."

Meanwhile, downrightnow.com/facebook says Facebook's current status is "Likely Service Disruption." You can see what I mean in the screenshot above.

I have contacted Facebook and will update you if I hear back.

Update at 11:45 PM PST: The list of countries is growing very quickly; this is clearly much bigger than the last outage. Thank you to all sending me reports and commenting on this article!

Update at 12:00 AM PST: Some are saying that Facebook is starting to work again. If it's not yet fixed for you, please be patient. I'm still waiting to hear back from Facebook.

Update at 1:00 AM PST: "Today, we experienced technical difficulties causing the site to be unavailable for a number of users in Europe," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. "The issue has been resolved and everyone should now have access to Facebook. We apologise for any inconvenience." Some users tell me they are still having problems.

Update at 5:00 AM PST: After some seven hours of issues, downrightnow.com/facebook has changed Facebook's status to "Possible Service Trouble."

Update at 10:00 AM PST: After some 12 hours of issues, downrightnow.com/facebook has changed Facebook's status to "Up."

See also:

• How much is Facebook worth?
• Facebook's IPO by the numbers
• Facebook files for $5 billion IPO
• Mark Zuckerberg was planning to sell Facebook in July 2004
• Facebook has over 845 million users
• Facebook has over 425 million mobile users
• Warning: beware of Facebook IPO scams