When did this latest X break -in?

This is very much a global X / Twitter stream interruption, with reports of problems that climb rapidly in the US and UK from around 2 p.m. 10.50 ET / KL. 2.50 GMT on the DownDetector site.

They have just hit a highlight of 30,000 reports in the United States, which is a massive interruption. In the UK, reports have fallen in the last hour, but still hovers at the 4,700 mark.

So what causes the problems? While there has been nothing official, some cyber security commentators suggest that it may be a so -called DDOS (or distributed attack on denial) in which a flood of Internet traffic overwhelms a server.

In other words, tighten up – because this could last a while …