Garmin fitness tracking service goes down, frustrating users

GPS device-maker Garmin's online fitness tracking service has gone down, frustrating runners and cyclists who rely on the service to upload data from their latest workouts. Garmin Connect remained out of service on Friday. 

Garmin Connect, an app and website that works with the company's popular line of fitness watches, stopped working on Thursday. The company at the time apologized for the disruption, when it indicated the problem was more widespread and also affected its communications systems.

"We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect," the company said on its Twitter accounts and website. "This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience."

Fitness enthusiasts took to social media to vent their frustrations, with some saying they weren't able to connect since Thursday. Garmin Connect lets users track workout data and share their running and cycling routes. The outage may also be impacting pilots, with tech site ZDNet reporting that pilots haven't been able to download updates of Garmin's aviation database on their Garmin airplane navigational systems. 

Several Garmin employees have reported that the issue appears to be a ransomware attack, ZDNet reported. It added that Garmin declined to confirm that the outage is related to such an attack.