Tesco website attack leaves shoppers unable to order

The supermarket giant said it had suffered an outage due to an attempt to ‘interfere’ with its systems.

Helen William
Sunday 24 October 2021 14:32 BST
Tesco said an outage on its website and app is due to an attempt to ‘interfere’ with its systems but there is ‘no reason’ to believe customer data has been affected (Tim Goode/PA)
Tesco said an outage on its website and app is due to an attempt to ‘interfere’ with its systems but there is ‘no reason’ to believe customer data has been affected (Tim Goode/PA) (PA Archive)

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Tesco’s website and app have gone down due to a suspected hack.

The outage, which left customers struggling to shop for groceries or track orders, began on Saturday morning and continued into Sunday.

The supermarket giant said the problem was due to an attempt to “interfere” with its systems but there is “no reason” to believe customer data has been affected.

An attempt was made to interfere with our systems which has caused problems with the search function on the site

Tesco spokesman

A Tesco spokesman said on Sunday: “Since yesterday, we’ve been experiencing disruption to our online grocery website and app.

“An attempt was made to interfere with our systems. which has caused problems with the search function on the site.

“We’re working hard to fully restore all services and apologise for the inconvenience.

“There is no reason to believe that this issue impacts customer data and we continue to take ongoing action to make sure all data stays safe.”

Tesco posted a tweet on Saturday which told customers: “We’re experiencing an issue with our website and app and are working hard to get things back up and running. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

By Sunday lunchtime online shoppers were met with a message which said: “Sorry, there’s currently an issue on our website.

“We’re busy fixing it right now and hope this doesn’t cause you too much inconvenience. Please come back and try again later.

“Thank you for your patience.”

The online issues have left customers unable to make changes to pre-arranged orders and Tesco has been flooded with queries.

On Sunday morning a shopper tweeted: “25 hours later and it’s still down. You should at least know what the issue is now – can you please let us know so any fears that our personal data has been stolen can be alleviated or acted upon?”

Tesco responded on Twitter: “We’re currently experiencing issues with our website that’s affecting all of our customers right now.

“We’re really sorry for any inconvenience caused and our IT teams are working really hard to fix the issues as a priority. Please try again later.”

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