Dropbox's servers are located in the United States. Since Dropbox is an American company, user data may be requested by U.S. government officials under the Patriot Act. However, twice a year, Dropbox publishes a transparency report that documents every request from the government. Both idle files and files in transmission are encrypted. The company uses 256-bit encryption for idle files and 128-bit encryption for files in transmission. With Dropbox, files are transmitted through an SSL channel.