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I live in Denmark and am exploring the option of using Ubuntu and Ubuntu One in the Danish state schools.

And in this context, I have looked a little into Danish law on cloud servies and data security.

And I would therefore like to know which countries Ubuntu One's U1 servers are located when I'm accessing my Ubuntu One data from Denmark.

And if they are located in multiple data centers/countries, which security methods are used to secure data transfer between them?

Mandy
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Voidcode
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  • This is interesting to me in the UK too: the Data Protection Act in the UK has some requirements about data not being stored outside the European Economic Area. – 8128 May 08 '11 at 17:27
  • The data is transferred in a SSL encrypted connection but is stored unencrypted in the server. However,it doesn't really matter as NSA and GCHQ are wathing you anyway. – papukaija Jul 07 '13 at 12:56

2 Answers2

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Hostname    one.ubuntu.com
ISP     Canonical Ltd
Continent   Europe
Flag    GB
Country     United Kingdom
Country Code    GB (GBR)
Region  Unknown
Local time*     
08 May 2011 19:17
City    Unknown
atitude     54
IP Address  91.189.89.219
Longitude   -2

Reference: Go to http://geo.flagfox.net/ and type in the input field "one.ubuntu.com" and hit "Submit" button.

Anwar
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snevs
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    You shouldn't be concerned since both countries are in EU. – snevs May 08 '11 at 18:20
  • I've tried to trace the route and indeed, it is in UK. the above specified location. – snevs May 08 '11 at 18:22
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    While I guess it is possible that all data is stored in England, this answer definitely doesn't show that. At most it answers where one endpoint for accessing Ubuntu One is located. – andol Jul 07 '13 at 12:25
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Please be aware that the server referenced by the domain name one.ubuntu.com is not necessarily the same server on which your data is stored. In fact it most likely is not!

Even if the data flow goes through this server, the data could be stored somewhere else. According to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/TechnicalDetails: "The heavy duty backend storage is ultimately out-sourced to Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service)." So it's possible that your data is stored all over the world, e.g. USA.

With Amazon S3 it is possible to restrict the area where the data is stored (e.g. within the EU). It would be very helpful to know if Canonical did this. But be aware that even if the data is stored within the EU it's still stored at an US company.

Mario
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