TalkTalk apologises after image sharing site Imgur gets blocked for thousands of customers

TalkTalk said the temporary blocking was down to a 'network issue'

TalkTalk apologised for the accidental blocking (AFP/Getty)

TalkTalk customers have complained after popular image sharing site Imgur appeared to have been blocked by the internet provider.

Users said on social media that Imgur, which is often used to host images posted on Reddit, was stubbornly refusing to load on their computers, even though they could access other websites like normal.

Some customers were able to access the site through VPNs, suggesting the problem lied with TalkTalk and not Imgur.

According to internet analysis company Alexa, Imgur is the 46th most popular site on the web, so thousands of TalkTalk customers are believed to have been affected.

TalkTalk acknowledged the problem, and have apologised for the outage. On the help page of its website, the company said: "We're aware that some of you are having trouble accessing the Imgur website."

"We know it's frustrating when parts of your TalkTalk service don't work as you'd expect and we're really sorry that you can't access this website at the moment."

A TalkTalk spokesperson put the blocking down to a "network issue". Reddit users noticed that the problem seemed to be down to one of TalkTalk's routers, explaining why Imgur was blocked for some customers.

After users flagged up the issue, the company said its engineers were solving the problem, and confirmed it had been "resolved" on Thursday afternoon.