Verizon says network is fine, no DDoS attacks
Other networks also deny having any problems
Verizon told FOX Business Monday that its wireless network is operating fine and has not experienced any disruptions or Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS) despite claims online of disrupted service.
"Verizon has robust layers of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protections that we monitor 24 x 7 to protect our network and customers,” a Verizon spokesperson said. “We have seen no DDoS activity that would impact our networks today."
“DDoS” was trending on Twitter Monday, and Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, even tweeted that a DDoS attack had occurred. A spokesperson for Lieu said his tweet was “based off public reporting.”
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Verizon also blamed a third-party website that tracks wireless service, Downdetector.com, for the widespread report of disrupted coverage. Downdetector reported thousands of problems from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and other wireless networks Monday.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VZ | VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC. | 42.51 | +0.28 | +0.68% |
| TMUS | T-MOBILE US INC. | 236.58 | +1.11 | +0.47% |
| T | AT&T INC. | 22.98 | +0.15 | +0.66% |
“We understand Downdetector is falsely reporting Verizon network issues. Sites such as Downdetector.com utilize limited crowdsourced data drawn from sample social posts which are often statistically insignificant or factually incorrect,” a Verizon spokesperson told FOX Business. “These types of sites do not evaluate and confirm the crowd-sourced data that they receive, they simply aggregate it and report it. The result can be faulty reports of network performance interruptions causing wide-spread miscommunication for wireless users."
A spokesperson for Downdetector said the company monitors user-reported issues to identify outages and that most of Monday's problems were with T-Mobile.
"I can confirm that today we saw a large number of user reports of issues with T-Mobile and, to a lesser extent, the other major US carriers," the spokesperson told FOX Business. "User reported issues with T-Mobile peaked today around noon PST with 113,980 reports in the United States."
'ROUTING ISSUE' CAUSE OF T-MOBILE DATA SERVICE PROBLEM
T-Mobile is the only network that has publicly said it is having problems with its service. The company’s president of technology, Neville Ray, tweeted that T-Mobile was fixing a “voice and data issue that has been affecting customers around the country.” T-Mobile’s help page on Twitter said its problems were due to a “widespread routing issue.”
T-Mobile did not respond to a request for comment.
AT&T said Monday that its network is operating normally.
Sprint did not respond to a request for comment.