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Two or three countries, side by side, one row per question. Pick up to 3.

Countries

MexicoChecked 18 August 2026

Depends on your industryWork: MediumEnforcement: Waking up

In one paragraph: Mexico's general privacy law does not care where you store data. There is no approved-country list, no standard contract to sign and no permission to ask for. You need the right wording in your privacy notice and, usually, the person's consent. The rules that actually pin data to Mexico live in banking, money-laundering and tax law, not in the privacy law.
The catch: The relaxed headline stops the moment you are a bank, a stockbroker, a crowdfunding platform, an insurer or a phone company. Banks need written permission from the banking regulator before any processing happens abroad. Separately, anti-money-laundering law and tax law require many ordinary businesses to keep their records at a Mexican address for ten and five years. Those rules bind companies that have never read a privacy law.
Does this apply to me?: Probably yes, but Mexico is unusually vague about it. The privacy law says only that it applies across Mexican territory. It does not spell out when it reaches a company based abroad. The old rulebook did say the law caught a foreign company that used equipment or systems located in Mexico, and let that company appoint a local representative instead of opening an office. That old rulebook belonged to a law that was scrapped in March 2025, so its status today is genuinely unclear. There is no revenue or headcount threshold to fall below.Medium confidence
Can the data leave the country?: Under the general privacy law, yes, and with very little paperwork. Mexico has no list of approved countries and no list of banned ones. Sending data to a company abroad is treated exactly like sending it to a company down the road: say so in your privacy notice, get the person's consent unless one of seven exceptions applies, and pass the privacy notice on to whoever receives the data. Handing data to your own supplier who only follows your instructions is not even counted as a transfer. Five sectors override this, and in three of them the override is severe.High confidence
What do I have to do to send it abroad?: Nothing needs approval and no list exists in either direction. The model is simply unrestricted: any destination is allowed. What you need is a privacy notice that names the transfer and carries a clause where the person accepts or refuses it, plus that person's consent unless one of seven legal exceptions covers you. Because there is no list to populate, the government cannot make this stricter by adding a country. It would take a new law or a new regulation.High confidence
Who enforces this — and are they actually working?: Mexico abolished its independent privacy regulator. The National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Data Protection was wound up in March 2025 and its staff, files and cases were moved into a government ministry, the Anti-Corruption and Good Government Ministry. So the referee is now part of the government rather than independent of it. The ministry is staffed, but the law says the detailed procedure for complaints, inspections and fines will be set out in a regulation, and that regulation still has not been published. Financial regulators, by contrast, are visibly active and update their rulebooks almost monthly.Medium confidence
How long must I keep it, and when must I delete it?: There is no single retention period. The privacy law says delete data once it is no longer needed, after a blocking period equal to the time limit for suing over the relationship. One hard ceiling is written into the law: information about someone breaking a contract must be erased six years after the default. The floors are longer and come from other laws. Tax records must be kept five years and their supporting documents must be available at your Mexican tax address. Anti-money-laundering records must be kept ten years at an address you register with the Finance Ministry. Phone companies keep call and location records for two years. Where a floor and a ceiling clash, the floor wins, because the privacy law lets you keep data to meet a legal duty.High confidence
What happens when something goes wrong?: There are at least three clocks and they do not agree. Under the general privacy law you must tell the affected people immediately if a breach significantly harms their money or their reputation, and there is no duty to tell the regulator at all. Banks face a much tighter set: tell the banking regulator immediately, tell affected customers within forty-eight hours, file a full report within five working days, and send a remediation plan within fifteen working days of the incident ending. Phone companies must hand requested records to the authorities within twenty-four hours and keep a team available every hour of every day. Mexico has no general cyber-incident reporting law that catches everyone.High confidence
What's the trap?: Five things catch people out. Every private business in Mexico is now legally required to ask customers for their national population ID number. Anti-money-laundering rules force many ordinary businesses to keep ten years of records at a Mexican address, which quietly rules out a pure foreign cloud setup. Mishandling data can put a person in prison, not just cost a company money. Banks must get written permission before any processing happens abroad, and that includes routine cloud hosting. And the rulebook the privacy law keeps pointing at does not exist.High confidence
What's about to change?: The biggest thing coming is a regulation that is already overdue. The privacy law repeatedly says a rulebook will set the deadlines for complaints, inspections and fines, and the government missed its own June 2025 deadline to publish it. When it lands it could change how enforcement works overnight, with no consultation. Health law was changed in January 2026 to put telehealth on a statutory footing, and the biometric national ID is still being rolled out. The dangerous powers are the ones the government already holds rather than any bill in parliament.Medium confidence
Hardest industry wall: Payments — Disposiciones de carácter general aplicables a las instituciones de tecnología financiera, artículos 85 a 87
Finance — Ley Federal para la Prevención e Identificación de Operaciones con Recursos de Procedencia Ilícita, artículos 15 y 18
All industries — Código Fiscal de la Federación, artículos 28 y 30
Telecoms — Ley en Materia de Telecomunicaciones y Radiodifusión, artículo 183

PolandChecked 18 August 2026

Yes, with paperworkWork: HighEnforcement: Active

In one paragraph: Poland is a European Union country, so data may leave as long as you use one of the approved European transfer routes. We found no general Polish rule forcing data to stay in the country. The privacy regulator is fully staffed and busy, and it fines government bodies as well as companies. Finance is the sector to watch: the financial supervisor wants cloud data kept in Europe.
The catch: True in general, much weaker in finance. Banks, insurers, brokers and payment firms follow a supervisory notice telling them to keep cloud data in European data centres, to put critical firms' data inside Poland first where they can, and to warn the financial supervisor 14 days before any cloud project starts. That notice is a strong recommendation, not a ban — but the supervisor checks it. Classified government information sits outside all of this and is effectively locked inside Poland.
Does this apply to me?: Yes, it reaches you with no office in Poland. European privacy law applies to any organisation anywhere that offers goods or services to people in Poland, or that monitors their behaviour. There is no size or revenue threshold. An organisation based outside Europe normally has to name a representative inside Europe. Poland then adds one local step that foreign groups routinely miss: if you must appoint a data protection officer, you have to tell the Polish regulator that person's name and contact details within 14 days of appointing them.High confidence
Can the data leave the country?: Yes, with paperwork. Poland has not added a general rule of its own that keeps data inside the country, and European law actually forbids member states from imposing storage-location rules on data that is not about people, except on public-security grounds. We searched for industry walls in banking, payments, insurance, securities, health, telecoms, government cloud, mapping and gambling. The only one we could confirm from an official Polish source is in finance, and it is a firm supervisory recommendation rather than an outright ban.Medium confidence
What do I have to do to send it abroad?: Think of it as an approved-routes list. Personal data may go outside Europe if the destination country has been officially approved, or if you sign the standard European contract with the recipient, or if your corporate group has rules approved by a regulator. The approved-country list is real and populated — roughly sixteen countries plus one international organisation. For the United States it only covers companies that have signed up to a specific certification scheme, so you have to check the recipient, not the country.High confidence
Who enforces this — and are they actually working?: The Personal Data Protection Office, and it is genuinely working. It is led by Mirosław Wróblewski, it publishes news several times a week, and its public decisions database held 581 decisions when we checked on 18 August 2026, with new ones published through June and July 2026. It fines public bodies too: it penalised the Minister of Justice in June 2026 and a local social welfare centre later the same month. Three other regulators matter — the financial supervisor for banks and insurers, the electronic communications office for telecoms and post, and the Ministry of Digital Affairs for cyber security.High confidence
How long must I keep it, and when must I delete it?: There is a ceiling and a floor. The ceiling is European: you may not keep personal data in a form that identifies someone for longer than you need it, and you have to be able to state that period. The floor is Polish: tax, accounting, employment and medical rules force you to keep certain records for years. When the two collide, the specific keeping duty wins for those records and everything else must still be deleted on time. We could not open the official Polish texts for the exact periods on the day we checked, so treat any specific number you read elsewhere as unverified until you see the statute.Medium confidence
What happens when something goes wrong?: Count at least two clocks, often three. For a personal data breach you have 72 hours to tell the Polish privacy regulator, and you must warn the people affected without undue delay if the risk to them is high. Separately, Poland rewrote its cyber security law and the new version started on 3 April 2026; if you are on the new register of key or important organisations you also report to the national cyber teams, on a much shorter first clock. Financial firms add a third set of reporting duties to the financial supervisor. The overlap is what breaks people, because the same incident triggers all three with different content and different deadlines.Medium confidence
What's the trap?: Five things that are not in the summary. First, appointing a data protection officer is not the end of it — you have 14 days to file that person's name and contact details with the Polish regulator, and foreign groups miss this constantly. Second, the list of Polish organisations that must appoint one is wider than expected and includes the central bank and state research institutes. Third, a brand-new Polish law on data management started in July 2026 and can fine you about two million złoty, roughly $550,000, for sending protected public-sector data to the wrong country. Fourth, the financial supervisor expects to be told 14 days before a cloud project starts and wants critical firms' data inside Poland where possible. Fifth, being a public body is no shield — the regulator fined the Minister of Justice in June 2026.High confidence
What's about to change?: Three dated things and one live risk. Poland's new cyber security register is being phased in through 2026: self-registration opened on 7 May 2026, and organisations the ministry enters itself get six months from being served notice to complete their details. On 12 January 2027 European rules ban cloud providers from charging you anything to move your data out. On 2 April 2027 a new European regulation on how privacy regulators run cross-border cases starts to apply, which will change how Polish complaints against foreign companies are handled. The live risk is the European Union–United States data transfer arrangement, which is valid today but being challenged.High confidence
Hardest industry wall: None found.

The eight framework questions answered for each selected country
Question	MexicoChecked 18 August 2026	PolandChecked 18 August 2026
The three ratings	Depends on your industry Work: Medium Enforcement: Waking up	Yes, with paperwork Work: High Enforcement: Active
In one paragraph	Mexico's general privacy law does not care where you store data. There is no approved-country list, no standard contract to sign and no permission to ask for. You need the right wording in your privacy notice and, usually, the person's consent. The rules that actually pin data to Mexico live in banking, money-laundering and tax law, not in the privacy law.	Poland is a European Union country, so data may leave as long as you use one of the approved European transfer routes. We found no general Polish rule forcing data to stay in the country. The privacy regulator is fully staffed and busy, and it fines government bodies as well as companies. Finance is the sector to watch: the financial supervisor wants cloud data kept in Europe.
The catch	The relaxed headline stops the moment you are a bank, a stockbroker, a crowdfunding platform, an insurer or a phone company. Banks need written permission from the banking regulator before any processing happens abroad. Separately, anti-money-laundering law and tax law require many ordinary businesses to keep their records at a Mexican address for ten and five years. Those rules bind companies that have never read a privacy law.	True in general, much weaker in finance. Banks, insurers, brokers and payment firms follow a supervisory notice telling them to keep cloud data in European data centres, to put critical firms' data inside Poland first where they can, and to warn the financial supervisor 14 days before any cloud project starts. That notice is a strong recommendation, not a ban — but the supervisor checks it. Classified government information sits outside all of this and is effectively locked inside Poland.
Does this apply to me?	Probably yes, but Mexico is unusually vague about it. The privacy law says only that it applies across Mexican territory. It does not spell out when it reaches a company based abroad. The old rulebook did say the law caught a foreign company that used equipment or systems located in Mexico, and let that company appoint a local representative instead of opening an office. That old rulebook belonged to a law that was scrapped in March 2025, so its status today is genuinely unclear. There is no revenue or headcount threshold to fall below.Medium confidence	Yes, it reaches you with no office in Poland. European privacy law applies to any organisation anywhere that offers goods or services to people in Poland, or that monitors their behaviour. There is no size or revenue threshold. An organisation based outside Europe normally has to name a representative inside Europe. Poland then adds one local step that foreign groups routinely miss: if you must appoint a data protection officer, you have to tell the Polish regulator that person's name and contact details within 14 days of appointing them.High confidence
Can the data leave the country?	Under the general privacy law, yes, and with very little paperwork. Mexico has no list of approved countries and no list of banned ones. Sending data to a company abroad is treated exactly like sending it to a company down the road: say so in your privacy notice, get the person's consent unless one of seven exceptions applies, and pass the privacy notice on to whoever receives the data. Handing data to your own supplier who only follows your instructions is not even counted as a transfer. Five sectors override this, and in three of them the override is severe.High confidence	Yes, with paperwork. Poland has not added a general rule of its own that keeps data inside the country, and European law actually forbids member states from imposing storage-location rules on data that is not about people, except on public-security grounds. We searched for industry walls in banking, payments, insurance, securities, health, telecoms, government cloud, mapping and gambling. The only one we could confirm from an official Polish source is in finance, and it is a firm supervisory recommendation rather than an outright ban.Medium confidence
What do I have to do to send it abroad?	Nothing needs approval and no list exists in either direction. The model is simply unrestricted: any destination is allowed. What you need is a privacy notice that names the transfer and carries a clause where the person accepts or refuses it, plus that person's consent unless one of seven legal exceptions covers you. Because there is no list to populate, the government cannot make this stricter by adding a country. It would take a new law or a new regulation.High confidence	Think of it as an approved-routes list. Personal data may go outside Europe if the destination country has been officially approved, or if you sign the standard European contract with the recipient, or if your corporate group has rules approved by a regulator. The approved-country list is real and populated — roughly sixteen countries plus one international organisation. For the United States it only covers companies that have signed up to a specific certification scheme, so you have to check the recipient, not the country.High confidence
Who enforces this — and are they actually working?	Mexico abolished its independent privacy regulator. The National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Data Protection was wound up in March 2025 and its staff, files and cases were moved into a government ministry, the Anti-Corruption and Good Government Ministry. So the referee is now part of the government rather than independent of it. The ministry is staffed, but the law says the detailed procedure for complaints, inspections and fines will be set out in a regulation, and that regulation still has not been published. Financial regulators, by contrast, are visibly active and update their rulebooks almost monthly.Medium confidence	The Personal Data Protection Office, and it is genuinely working. It is led by Mirosław Wróblewski, it publishes news several times a week, and its public decisions database held 581 decisions when we checked on 18 August 2026, with new ones published through June and July 2026. It fines public bodies too: it penalised the Minister of Justice in June 2026 and a local social welfare centre later the same month. Three other regulators matter — the financial supervisor for banks and insurers, the electronic communications office for telecoms and post, and the Ministry of Digital Affairs for cyber security.High confidence
How long must I keep it, and when must I delete it?	There is no single retention period. The privacy law says delete data once it is no longer needed, after a blocking period equal to the time limit for suing over the relationship. One hard ceiling is written into the law: information about someone breaking a contract must be erased six years after the default. The floors are longer and come from other laws. Tax records must be kept five years and their supporting documents must be available at your Mexican tax address. Anti-money-laundering records must be kept ten years at an address you register with the Finance Ministry. Phone companies keep call and location records for two years. Where a floor and a ceiling clash, the floor wins, because the privacy law lets you keep data to meet a legal duty.High confidence	There is a ceiling and a floor. The ceiling is European: you may not keep personal data in a form that identifies someone for longer than you need it, and you have to be able to state that period. The floor is Polish: tax, accounting, employment and medical rules force you to keep certain records for years. When the two collide, the specific keeping duty wins for those records and everything else must still be deleted on time. We could not open the official Polish texts for the exact periods on the day we checked, so treat any specific number you read elsewhere as unverified until you see the statute.Medium confidence
What happens when something goes wrong?	There are at least three clocks and they do not agree. Under the general privacy law you must tell the affected people immediately if a breach significantly harms their money or their reputation, and there is no duty to tell the regulator at all. Banks face a much tighter set: tell the banking regulator immediately, tell affected customers within forty-eight hours, file a full report within five working days, and send a remediation plan within fifteen working days of the incident ending. Phone companies must hand requested records to the authorities within twenty-four hours and keep a team available every hour of every day. Mexico has no general cyber-incident reporting law that catches everyone.High confidence	Count at least two clocks, often three. For a personal data breach you have 72 hours to tell the Polish privacy regulator, and you must warn the people affected without undue delay if the risk to them is high. Separately, Poland rewrote its cyber security law and the new version started on 3 April 2026; if you are on the new register of key or important organisations you also report to the national cyber teams, on a much shorter first clock. Financial firms add a third set of reporting duties to the financial supervisor. The overlap is what breaks people, because the same incident triggers all three with different content and different deadlines.Medium confidence
What's the trap?	Five things catch people out. Every private business in Mexico is now legally required to ask customers for their national population ID number. Anti-money-laundering rules force many ordinary businesses to keep ten years of records at a Mexican address, which quietly rules out a pure foreign cloud setup. Mishandling data can put a person in prison, not just cost a company money. Banks must get written permission before any processing happens abroad, and that includes routine cloud hosting. And the rulebook the privacy law keeps pointing at does not exist.High confidence	Five things that are not in the summary. First, appointing a data protection officer is not the end of it — you have 14 days to file that person's name and contact details with the Polish regulator, and foreign groups miss this constantly. Second, the list of Polish organisations that must appoint one is wider than expected and includes the central bank and state research institutes. Third, a brand-new Polish law on data management started in July 2026 and can fine you about two million złoty, roughly $550,000, for sending protected public-sector data to the wrong country. Fourth, the financial supervisor expects to be told 14 days before a cloud project starts and wants critical firms' data inside Poland where possible. Fifth, being a public body is no shield — the regulator fined the Minister of Justice in June 2026.High confidence
What's about to change?	The biggest thing coming is a regulation that is already overdue. The privacy law repeatedly says a rulebook will set the deadlines for complaints, inspections and fines, and the government missed its own June 2025 deadline to publish it. When it lands it could change how enforcement works overnight, with no consultation. Health law was changed in January 2026 to put telehealth on a statutory footing, and the biometric national ID is still being rolled out. The dangerous powers are the ones the government already holds rather than any bill in parliament.Medium confidence	Three dated things and one live risk. Poland's new cyber security register is being phased in through 2026: self-registration opened on 7 May 2026, and organisations the ministry enters itself get six months from being served notice to complete their details. On 12 January 2027 European rules ban cloud providers from charging you anything to move your data out. On 2 April 2027 a new European regulation on how privacy regulators run cross-border cases starts to apply, which will change how Polish complaints against foreign companies are handled. The live risk is the European Union–United States data transfer arrangement, which is valid today but being challenged.High confidence
Hardest industry wall	Payments — Disposiciones de carácter general aplicables a las instituciones de tecnología financiera, artículos 85 a 87 Finance — Ley Federal para la Prevención e Identificación de Operaciones con Recursos de Procedencia Ilícita, artículos 15 y 18 All industries — Código Fiscal de la Federación, artículos 28 y 30 Telecoms — Ley en Materia de Telecomunicaciones y Radiodifusión, artículo 183	None found.