We are proud to have thousands of users in every European country. Until recently, we were part of what was known as the “Safe Harbor” framework, otherwise known as “Privacy Shield”, which allowed US companies to store data for their European customers in the US. Unfortunately, a European court recently invalidated this framework.
This decision put many American companies and their customers in a tough spot. Some companies chose to stop serving customers in the EU, and others presented customers with new contract provisions requiring them to waive legal data protections.
There was no way Jotform would stop serving our European customers, so we decided to store European user data only on European servers and not transfer it back to the US.
We updated our software with a new option, to transfer all user data to our European servers. Once an EU customer switches to EU Safe Mode, their form data will only be kept on our European servers.
One great bonus of this setup is that it will be faster. Since the forms and data are now kept in Europe, and our European site is hosted in Europe, both our users and the people responding to their forms will enjoy optimized site performance.
In the coming months, we are planning to have all of our European users switch to the new setup, but during the beta period, switching to our European servers is optional.
What happens when I transfer my data to Europe?
After you choose to transfer your data, your form data will be copied to our European servers. Once the transfer is complete and everything is double checked, we will delete your data from our US servers.
Upon completion, you’ll receive a confirmation email from us. Since your data is only available on jotformeu.com, when you log into Jotform, you’ll be redirected there to access your data.
What is Safe Harbor?
Safe Harbor is an agreement between the United States Department of Commerce and the EU made in 2000 to regulate the way US companies export and handle personal data of European citizens.
Why was it invalidated?
The European Court of Justice invalidated the US-EU Safe Harbor framework as a result of a case against Facebook. The court decided the personal privacy and data protection laws were inadequate in the US.
Why is this decision so important?
US companies, such as Jotform, depended on the Safe Harbor / Privacy Shield framework to transfer and store European data on US servers.
What is an EU Safe Form?
An EU Safe Form is a form that is served from Jotform’s European servers in Germany. When the form data is submitted it is stored in Jotform’s European servers and the data can only be accessed from Jotform’s European site. The data is never transferred to the US.
Note that an EU Safe Form is only safe if you are a Jotform user in Europe. US companies must still comply with EU privacy laws when transferring data on EU citizens to the US. If you are a Jotform customer and you will or may be collecting personal information on EU citizens through use of your forms, you must unambiguously state in your form that the data will be transferred to US and get agreement from the user with a terms checkbox or a terms widget.
Send Comment:
23 Comments:
More than a year ago
There is error to continue on my form and how can I correct it.
More than a year ago
I work for a US-based company with a regional EU headquarters. I want some forms to store data in the EU, and others to store data in the US. It seems where I create the form determines if the published URL is EU or US. Is it possible to make this decision on each form?
More than a year ago
yes, the language used is not good.
Safharbour failed to protect the data of countries covered by the agreement. US institutions were still misusing the data and ignoring the alleged protections in the "Safeharbour" agreement. Because of these failures the agreement was annulled. This was not just Facebook, but US government agencies as well as hosting companies. I.e. The US cannot be trusted irrespective of what they say and there was no recourse when the abuses were identified.
More than a year ago
جيد
More than a year ago
Hi, I am in Australia and wish to use your forms to collect sensitive information from clients. Do you have plans for an Australian server or would it be appropriate for me to use the EU server? Thank you.
More than a year ago
I noticed that our form was automatically given an eu address and when I checked My Account Settings storage in the EU had been ticked. This is fine with me, but it does seem to cut across the instructions elsewhere on the site about opting in to this choice. Has this now changed?
Thanks, Rachel
More than a year ago
I love the way you write 'unfortunately' the EU have changed the rules. They have done so to protect European users information being mis-used. It means that the EU cares about the privacy and the rights of its inhabitants.
Jotform's attitude here is very disappointing. Twisting the info to make the concern for data integrity shown by Europeans seem like a red tape inconvenience.
Judging by the comments here it seems like too many people are foolish enough to swallow it.
More than a year ago
If I transfer my data to the European server will I have to change the urls of all my forms I already have in use? I have hundreds of forms I use in my ebay shop & I simply would not have the time to change all of my links.
Is it necessary to change to the EU servers, what would happen if I did nothing?
Would my forms still work?
Lee ...
More than a year ago
Thanks for all these info... one detail it is FREE to move the data in EU or we need to pay something ?
Thanks !
More than a year ago
So this would mean that under no circumstances, my data on your EU servers can be accessed in the US?
Do you have a separate European office that is will be dealing with European users?
More than a year ago
Hi,
will this effect the url of the forms itself? We published al lot of forms with the jotform.com-url. Di we have to change the url of each form or will it be redirected to the eu-url?Thank You
More than a year ago
Hi,
I've got forms on "jotformeu.com" and on "jotform.com".Will that be a problem and should I do something?
Frank
More than a year ago
This happened to me yesterday:
.GWP-3570752
Postmaster Team odpowiada [05-11-2015 11:07]:
---------------------------------------------
Dear User,
thank You for contacting the Postmaster Team of Grupa Wirtualna Polska S.A.
We blocked your e-mails because of the jotformeu.com domain which was in your SMTP header or mail contents. This domain was listed on URIBL so this is the reason of the rejection.
--
ZespóÅ‚ Postmaster / The Postmaster Team
-----------------------------------
Dział Obsługi Klienta / Customer Service
Pon-Pt 8:00 - 18:00 / Mon-Fri 8:00 - 18:00
-----------------------------------
Grupy Wirtualna Polska S.A.
More than a year ago
Good Work Jot Form !
More than a year ago
Thanks, but no need to fly the EU flag. We're sick to the teeth with it over here.
More than a year ago
what about American companies collecting EU user data in addition to US and the rest of the worlds data? Are we supposed to be moving everything to EU or breaking up the forms to have separate versions for EU?
More than a year ago
Will there be any downtime while this happens? We host rather a lot of important forms through your service so we'd need to know in advance if this needs to be done overnight. Also, CAN this be done ovwernight, or will it be done on a case by case basis, when jotform staff are able to do them? If I press go now, will it start now?
More than a year ago
Will I need to re include forms on all my customers websites or transfer is safe for me ?
More than a year ago
Thanks very much Jotform!
More than a year ago
This does not affect your Customers outside of Europe. Do we need to migrate?
More than a year ago
Excellent work Jotform! This is proof why Jotform stands out from the rest!
More than a year ago
Após transferir meus dados para o novo servidor, não consigo mais acessar minha conta!
por favor! me ajudem!More than a year ago
Hi there - great news and well done for responding to this so efficiently and elegantly.
I've tried to click the "Transfer my data to Europe" button but nothing happens....apart from the page reloading.Am I missing something?
many thanks
James