EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah — If social media is any indication, there are plenty of people in Eagle Mountain who choose local when it comes to their internet service.
But for many customers with Direct Communications, it's led to spotty service and frustration for the past several days as the company battles a cyberattack.
The company first reported the outages last Thursday. They’ve updated customers several times through the weekend, explaining the issue is with an upstream provider that’s been maliciously targeted.
But their office was closed to the public Monday, and if you tried to call, you’d find their phone lines are down too because of that same outage.
“We are currently aware of an outage affecting some customers," the phone message said in part. "Our engineers are actively investigating…and we are still working to determine the full scope of the outage.”
It's especially difficult in an age where an increasing number of workers start their day by simply opening their laptop.
“I started out making stuff for my kids, then realized that like, I could sell it,” said Jessica Newman, who's lived in Eagle Mountain for 11 years.
Newman's had a whole business at her fingertips for much of that decade, after she started her own Etsy store selling digital files.
“I do some stickers, but mostly like holiday digital files to make parents' jobs easier for holiday stuff,” Newman said.
But the shop hasn't been clicking for her lately.
“It’s really hard to sell digital things when I can’t get onto a digital device," said Newman. "It is really hard.”
She said her internet has come back from time to time, but has remained very inconsistent. So it's left those who work from home like her to get creative.
“Using our phones for hotspots, but everybody is doing that," Newman said. "So we’re switching back and forth — which one is working best at the minute?”
Newman said she may even go to her parents' home in American Fork just to complete some orders.
It’s led to lots of angry comments and she feels the frustration. But Newman hopes people will give them a little grace as they work to resolve the issue.
“There’s comments that are like, why didn’t they have redundancies? Why didn’t they have a backup plan?" Newman said. "Well, maybe they’re a small enough company that they haven’t had to worry about this…and as they grow, that can be a great thing to look into.”
Eagle Mountain's City Hall was also affected by the outage for a time. But city officials told FOX 13 News they were open and operational as of Monday morning.
We made multiple attempts to reach Direct Communications for more information, but have not yet heard back.