Lifeline back online after technical issue caused it to become “unavailable”

Australians in crisis once again have access to an essential service after a technical issue took it offline.

Suicide prevention service Lifeline is coming back online after a technical issue left Australians facing a mental health crisis unable to access its services.

The organisation’s voice, text and chat services are now back up and running.

It’s systems were down for over two and a half hours while engineers worked to get the system back online.

Currently Lifeline Voice, Text and Chat services are unavailable due to a technical issue. We are working hard to resolve the issue and get the service back online as soon as possible.
If life is in danger call Triple Zero 000 pic.twitter.com/aNuY63Z6eE

— Lifeline (@LifelineAust) January 16, 2023

Those who felt like their life was in danger were urged to call Triple Zero for assistance while the service was down.

“We are working hard to resolve the issue and get the service back online as soon as possible,” Lifeline said on Twitter at the time.

Lifeline has not yet determined the cause of the attack and its unclear if the organisation has been the subject of a cyber attack.

“The priority was getting [services] back up and running to make sure help seekers/people in crisis could get through - next they’ll investigate and find out the root cause,” a spokesperson said.

13 Yarn, Lifeline’s Indigenous crisis hotline, was also affected by the technical difficulties.

Kids Helpline has not been impacted by the outage as it is run by a separate company.

More to come.

Originally published as Lifeline back online after technical issue caused it to become “unavailable”