Hello,
We are using the public Nominatim API (nominatim.openstreetmap.org) for reverse geocoding in our application.
We need to document the destination/processing countries for our Privacy Policy.
Could you please confirm:
Which countries/jurisdictions currently host the Nominatim API servers that process requests to nominatim.openstreetmap.org?
Are requests distributed across the UK, Ireland, and/or Netherlands?
For privacy/data-residency purposes, which countries should an application using the public Nominatim API declare as the destination/processing countries?
We are specifically looking for the current server/processing jurisdictions rather than the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s registered/head-office location.
Ahem, sorry, but for any serious privacy policy and compliance you would need to either host Nominatim yourself or find a third party with compliance built in and a DPA for you in place.
You would not get a DPA from OSMF and cannot control the processor so you would have to travel a different road to get compliant geocoding.
Use of all services is subject to the OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy. Please do not submit personal data or other confidential material to any of our services.
section.
If info there is insufficient you are very unlikely to get greater commitment from OpenStreetMap Foundation. OpenStreetMap Foundation operates on shoestring budget and these free services are not operated commercially or with some kind of SLA, and administrative capacity is scarce resource.
To extend @Mateusz_Konieczny, you are accessing a free service run by volunteers. Nominatim is free and open source software. You can host it yourself if you need this level of control. nominatim.openstreetmap.org is overloaded. Please consider switching to a paid alternative if you can.
There are companies running Nominatim servers. They are happy to answer your questions for their services. You can find a list of alternative providers – some even offer the same API – on the wiki.