Facebook, Messenger and Instagram down all over Milton Keynes and elsewhere

Facebook, Messenger and Instagram appear to have crashed globally.

Tens of thousands of people have reported they cannot get in to their accounts after receiving ‘your session has expired’ or ‘unexpected error’ messages this afternoon.

Some people are also reporting problems sending and receiving WhatsApp messages. These, like Facebook and Instagram, arepart of the Meta parent group.

The problem started at around 3.20pm and led to many users fearing their accounts had been hacked. When they tried to get back in, their password was rejected and they were encouraged to set up a new one.

"How do we know that some gremlin is not taking note of all this passwords? It’s all very strange,” said one user.

The outage is thought to be of the biggest issues for Meta in years.

Shortly before 4pm, Meta's Communications Director Andy Stone put a statement on X (formerly Twitter): "We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now.