Where the data lives, and how sure we are
Privatrol finds where an organisation keeps its data without asking it anything. Every place it reports comes with a confidence, so you can tell a fact from a hint.
Services leave traces of where they are
Cloud services answer public questions in ways that depend on where an account is kept. A mail server has a name. A published list says which region an address belongs to. A hostname can spell out the region. Privatrol collects those traces, compares them, and reports the place with the strength of the evidence behind it.
Microsoft 365 mailboxes
Microsoft's own routing says which server holds a mailbox, and the server name gives the geography, such as Canada, the United States or the European Union. Privatrol asks from two VPN exits in different Microsoft geographies, with a made-up address as a control, and counts a mailbox only when both agree. If the answers follow the caller, the tenant is reported as undetermined, never guessed.
SharePoint and OneDrive
The tenant's SharePoint site is found from its domains and brand, and proved by the tenant's own identifier. Its farm group gives a broad region. Multi-Geo satellites, which have their own addresses, are found and proved the same way, and each one is confirmed.
Teams
Teams has no public location signal. Its data follows the tenant's geography by Microsoft's design, so Privatrol reports it as inferred from the mailbox result.
Mail gateways and senders
Mail filtering gateways and mail-sending services often name their region in the hostname the organisation publishes. Privatrol reads those names and reports the region they state.
Cloud hosting regions
The cloud providers publish which address ranges belong to which region. Privatrol matches the organisation's addresses against those lists. Content delivery networks are reported as edge networks, with the origin not visible.
SaaS that names its region
Many software-as-a-service hostnames include the region of the customer's account. Where a pattern is known and tested, it is read. Regions Privatrol does not recognise are reported as unmapped.
Five levels, on every location
Judging a location uses its confidence. A place read from one weak signal can never produce more than a medium finding.
| Level | What it means | For example |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | An authoritative answer names the place. | A Microsoft mailbox server, a cloud provider's own published address range, a hostname that names its region |
| Strong | Two independent signals agree. | SharePoint's farm group agrees with the tenant's mailbox geography |
| Indicative | One weaker signal. | The geographic location of a mail gateway's address, or a SharePoint farm group on its own |
| Inferred | It follows from another location by the provider's documented design. | Teams data follows the tenant's geography |
| Unknown | The service is identified, but its location cannot be seen from outside. | Google Workspace, which stores data globally unless the customer sets a data-region policy |
What Privatrol will not do
- Guess. A mailbox in a tenant that hides which addresses exist is reported as undetermined, and an unrecognised cloud region as unmapped.
- Read contracts. A location from outside is a fact about where. Whether a lawful transfer mechanism exists is something to ask for.
- Treat a sign-up region as a data location. A tenant's region scope is shown, not judged.
- Hide gaps. Every dive lists each check as measured, not applicable, failed or undetermined, and says when only one usable VPN exit was available.
Where the organisation operates
The laws that apply depend on where the organisation does business, so Privatrol works that out too. The operator's own input (countries, provinces or states, sectors) is authoritative. Otherwise it infers jurisdictions from company registries and Wikidata (strong), and from country-code domains the organisation owns and from job-posting locations (indicative). Domains such as .io and .ai, which are used worldwide, are ignored. Each inferred jurisdiction lists its sources.
Rules for a sector, such as health or payments, are applied only when the operator sets the sector. Otherwise they are listed as applying if the organisation is in that sector.