Question

How private is the data I place on DigitalOcean servers?

Posted February 8, 2015 2.6k views

I’m not a lawyer. I was trying to interpret the section about content and privacy of my data, and I’d like clarification.

Q1) Does section 2.5 say, in effect, that DigitalOcean can access, use for any purpose, and share with anyone of it’s choosing, and give them the same permissions, any data that I place on your servers? So, in effect you’re saying that I can expect zero privacy of my data?

Q2) What about data I store on servers in Amsterdam? I won’t put anything illegal on any of your servers, I’m a decent and law abiding guy. Given the current and sad state of affairs where our own U.S government spies on it’s own U.S citizens, it would be nice to know if my data is out of their reach. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business who I communicate with, period. It’s absolutely unforgivable what they’re doing, and I’d like to avoid them as much as possible.

Thanks a bunch for your answers. I haven’t used your service much, but when I did I thought it pretty amazing. I’m sure it’s done nothing but improve since then. Hoping to use it again soon.

Cheers.

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1 answer
ryanpq February 9, 2015

Hey! As a Community Manager here at DO I am not in a position to provide you with definitive answers to legal questions but I will try to provide a bit of clarification. For definitive information I’d recommend contacting legal@

On your first question, it would appear that the section you mentioned is referring to the website (digitalocean.com) and not to your droplets directly. This would refer to the account information and any support tickets or posts here in the community.

When you create a new droplet only you have direct access to it. If you use an ssh key, only people with that key would be able to access your running droplet. If a temporary password is set you should be aware that that password is generated by the creation process which sends the email and is not stored anywhere once that email is sent.

As for your question about Amsterdam, while the legal department can provide more detailed information you should understand that your service is provided via a New York based company. We do not operate a subsidiary in the EU or elsewhere so you should assume that all droplets are under US jurisdiction.

I hope I was able to provide a bit of clarification and hope that you will email with any further questions or if you require further clarification.

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