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

Countries

SwedenChecked 18 August 2026

Depends on your industryWork: HighEnforcement: Active

In one paragraph: Sweden has no general law forcing data to stay in the country. Personal data leaves under the ordinary European rules. But four walls override that: gambling systems must sit in Sweden, telecoms records kept for the police may never leave the European Union, classified material needs a state-to-state deal, and accounting books stay in Sweden unless you tell the tax agency.
The catch: The relaxed headline stops being true the moment you touch online gambling, telecoms records held for law enforcement, security-sensitive activity, detailed maps and sea-depth data, a public authority's secret files, or a Swedish company's accounting books. In those six areas Sweden is far stricter than its reputation suggests, and two of them carry prison sentences rather than fines.
Does this apply to me?: Yes. Sweden applies the European privacy rules, so a company anywhere in the world is caught if it offers goods or services to people in Sweden or watches what they do. There is no size or revenue floor to duck under. Sweden's own top-up law adds Swedish-only duties on top, and those apply to anyone processing data under Swedish law, not just Swedish companies. If you are outside Europe and caught, you normally have to name a representative inside Europe.High confidence
Can the data leave the country?: In general, yes. Sweden has no law that says personal data must physically stay in Sweden, and European law actually bans Sweden from imposing storage rules on non-personal data except for national security reasons. The exceptions are what matter. Online gambling systems must be placed in Sweden. Telephone and internet records that operators keep for the police may not be stored outside the European Union. Security-classified material cannot go to a foreign body without a government-to-government agreement. And a Swedish company's accounting records must be kept in Sweden unless it tells the tax agency where they are instead.High confidence
What do I have to do to send it abroad?: Sweden adds nothing of its own here — it uses the European toolkit unchanged. The model is an allowlist of approved destinations, and that list is well populated: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Brazil and about a dozen others are approved. For everywhere else you sign the European Commission's standard contract, or use group-wide rules approved by a regulator, and you write down why you think the data will still be safe. United States transfers work only if the receiving company has signed up to the European Union–United States Data Privacy Framework, and that arrangement is under legal pressure.High confidence
Who enforces this — and are they actually working?: The main privacy regulator is the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection, and it is fully staffed and working. It published supervisory decisions in May, June and July 2026, including a reprimand to a large security company over filming its own staff, and in June 2026 it was also made Sweden's market surveillance authority for the European artificial intelligence rules. Other regulators matter just as much in their own lanes: the financial supervisor, the telecoms and post authority, the gambling authority, the Security Service and the Armed Forces.High confidence
How long must I keep it, and when must I delete it?: Sweden has a hard floor and a soft ceiling, and they pull in opposite directions. You must keep company accounting records for seven years after the end of the year they relate to, and patient records for at least ten years after the last entry. Against that, European privacy law says you must delete personal data once you no longer need it. Sweden resolves the clash the same way most of Europe does: a specific legal duty to keep something beats the general duty to delete it, so you keep it, lock it down and use it for nothing else.High confidence
What happens when something goes wrong?: Count at least three clocks, and they do not agree. For a personal data breach you have 72 hours to tell the privacy regulator, and you must tell the affected people without undue delay if the risk to them is high. Since 15 January 2026, organisations in important sectors must send an early warning to their cybersecurity supervisor within 24 hours of noticing a significant incident, then a fuller report within 72 hours — but trust service providers get only 24 hours for the full report. Financial firms have a fourth clock under the European digital resilience rules. The 24-hour warning is the one that catches people out.High confidence
What's the trap?: Five things that are not in any summary. One: a child can consent from age 13 in Sweden, the youngest age Europe allows, so a global default of 16 is wrong here. Two: you may only use a person's Swedish identity number without their consent when it is clearly justified — a Swedish-only rule with no European equivalent. Three: anything you send to a Swedish public authority can become a public document that any member of the public, including a competitor or a journalist, can demand a copy of. Four: giving a supplier access to a public authority's secret files is allowed only for purely technical processing or storage, and only if it is not inappropriate in the circumstances — the ordinary supplier contract is not enough. Five: mapping and sea-depth data is criminal law, not paperwork — spreading it without a permit can mean up to a year in prison.High confidence
What's about to change?: Two dated items. On 1 January 2027 a new law on the resilience of critical operators is proposed to start, covering eleven sectors and adding another 24-hour incident report. Also on 12 January 2027, European rules make it illegal for cloud providers to charge you to move your data out. Watch the government's national cloud policy, adopted on 28 May 2026: today it is only advice with no penalties, but it is the obvious vehicle for a future rule that public bodies must use European providers.High confidence
Hardest industry wall: Telecoms — Förordning (2022:511) om elektronisk kommunikation, 9 kap. 4 §
Online gaming — Spellagen (2018:1138), 16 kap. 2 §
Defence — Säkerhetsskyddslagen (2018:585) och Säkerhetsskyddsförordningen (2021:955)

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

The eight framework questions answered for each selected country
Question	SwedenChecked 18 August 2026	MexicoChecked 18 August 2026
The three ratings	Depends on your industry Work: High Enforcement: Active	Depends on your industry Work: Medium Enforcement: Waking up
In one paragraph	Sweden has no general law forcing data to stay in the country. Personal data leaves under the ordinary European rules. But four walls override that: gambling systems must sit in Sweden, telecoms records kept for the police may never leave the European Union, classified material needs a state-to-state deal, and accounting books stay in Sweden unless you tell the tax agency.	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 being true the moment you touch online gambling, telecoms records held for law enforcement, security-sensitive activity, detailed maps and sea-depth data, a public authority's secret files, or a Swedish company's accounting books. In those six areas Sweden is far stricter than its reputation suggests, and two of them carry prison sentences rather than fines.	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?	Yes. Sweden applies the European privacy rules, so a company anywhere in the world is caught if it offers goods or services to people in Sweden or watches what they do. There is no size or revenue floor to duck under. Sweden's own top-up law adds Swedish-only duties on top, and those apply to anyone processing data under Swedish law, not just Swedish companies. If you are outside Europe and caught, you normally have to name a representative inside Europe.High confidence	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?	In general, yes. Sweden has no law that says personal data must physically stay in Sweden, and European law actually bans Sweden from imposing storage rules on non-personal data except for national security reasons. The exceptions are what matter. Online gambling systems must be placed in Sweden. Telephone and internet records that operators keep for the police may not be stored outside the European Union. Security-classified material cannot go to a foreign body without a government-to-government agreement. And a Swedish company's accounting records must be kept in Sweden unless it tells the tax agency where they are instead.High confidence	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?	Sweden adds nothing of its own here — it uses the European toolkit unchanged. The model is an allowlist of approved destinations, and that list is well populated: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Brazil and about a dozen others are approved. For everywhere else you sign the European Commission's standard contract, or use group-wide rules approved by a regulator, and you write down why you think the data will still be safe. United States transfers work only if the receiving company has signed up to the European Union–United States Data Privacy Framework, and that arrangement is under legal pressure.High confidence	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?	The main privacy regulator is the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection, and it is fully staffed and working. It published supervisory decisions in May, June and July 2026, including a reprimand to a large security company over filming its own staff, and in June 2026 it was also made Sweden's market surveillance authority for the European artificial intelligence rules. Other regulators matter just as much in their own lanes: the financial supervisor, the telecoms and post authority, the gambling authority, the Security Service and the Armed Forces.High confidence	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?	Sweden has a hard floor and a soft ceiling, and they pull in opposite directions. You must keep company accounting records for seven years after the end of the year they relate to, and patient records for at least ten years after the last entry. Against that, European privacy law says you must delete personal data once you no longer need it. Sweden resolves the clash the same way most of Europe does: a specific legal duty to keep something beats the general duty to delete it, so you keep it, lock it down and use it for nothing else.High confidence	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?	Count at least three clocks, and they do not agree. For a personal data breach you have 72 hours to tell the privacy regulator, and you must tell the affected people without undue delay if the risk to them is high. Since 15 January 2026, organisations in important sectors must send an early warning to their cybersecurity supervisor within 24 hours of noticing a significant incident, then a fuller report within 72 hours — but trust service providers get only 24 hours for the full report. Financial firms have a fourth clock under the European digital resilience rules. The 24-hour warning is the one that catches people out.High confidence	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 that are not in any summary. One: a child can consent from age 13 in Sweden, the youngest age Europe allows, so a global default of 16 is wrong here. Two: you may only use a person's Swedish identity number without their consent when it is clearly justified — a Swedish-only rule with no European equivalent. Three: anything you send to a Swedish public authority can become a public document that any member of the public, including a competitor or a journalist, can demand a copy of. Four: giving a supplier access to a public authority's secret files is allowed only for purely technical processing or storage, and only if it is not inappropriate in the circumstances — the ordinary supplier contract is not enough. Five: mapping and sea-depth data is criminal law, not paperwork — spreading it without a permit can mean up to a year in prison.High confidence	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?	Two dated items. On 1 January 2027 a new law on the resilience of critical operators is proposed to start, covering eleven sectors and adding another 24-hour incident report. Also on 12 January 2027, European rules make it illegal for cloud providers to charge you to move your data out. Watch the government's national cloud policy, adopted on 28 May 2026: today it is only advice with no penalties, but it is the obvious vehicle for a future rule that public bodies must use European providers.High confidence	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	Telecoms — Förordning (2022:511) om elektronisk kommunikation, 9 kap. 4 § Online gaming — Spellagen (2018:1138), 16 kap. 2 § Defence — Säkerhetsskyddslagen (2018:585) och Säkerhetsskyddsförordningen (2021:955)	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