We’re concerned about the US Patriot Act.  Where are the servers located?

Our primary production servers are owned by Norada and operated by authorized Norada Staff. This equipment is located in our Global Internet Data Center (GIDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. This location is connected directly to the Internet backbone through nine global Internet providers and is SAS-70 type II certified. The GIDC provides the physical environment necessary to keep our service up and running 24x7. Backups are encrypted and transmitted to alternate sites. Files and photos are stored securely on Amazon’s S3 service. S3 uses decentralized storage techniques to improve upload/download response time i.e. they are stored as close to you as possible.

As with most broad policies, there is a practical side that needs to be applied or nobody would bother getting up in the morning. It is unlikely that the US Patriot Act is routinely invoked, or that officials have any interest in your information. Hosted applications — even the parts run by US companies — remain broadly safe, secure, and reliable. Safe Harbor provisions, model clauses, etc also remain an effective means of ensuring that day-to-day operations meet user needs while complying with relevant legislation. This is not legal advice. While it’s something to be aware of, and it’s ultimately your responsibility to determine if it’s a factor for your business, in reality it’s not something most folks lose sleep over.

In most countries, of course, there are exemptions to data protection laws specifically intended to permit reasonable use of data by law enforcement agencies.

More on how we protect your data.