Passengers have been forced to wait at check-in desks at Gatwick Airport [CREDIT: @sergepoliakoff]
Television channels, airports and banks around the world have been knocked offline in a massive IT outage causing Windows computers to suddenly shut down.
Patients have been left unable to make appointments with their GPs and rail commuters have been told to expect long delays as IT systems were plunged into chaos.
Sky News’s breakfast show was taken off air, while supermarkets checkouts went down as the disruption spread across Britain and the globe.
Online, users reported problems as far as Australia, New Zealand, India and Japan, with the UK heavily impacted.
Cyber security engineers have pointed to a problem with Crowdstrike, a piece of antivirus software used in many Microsoft systems, which appeared to be causing computers to crash.
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