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

Countries

SingaporeChecked 18 August 2026

Yes, with paperworkWork: MediumEnforcement: Active

In one paragraph: Singapore lets personal data leave the country, and we found no industry that is forced to keep data on Singaporean soil. What you must do instead is make the person receiving the data legally bound to protect it as well as Singapore law does. There is no government list of approved or banned countries and no permission to apply for. The privacy regulator is real, staffed, and publishes decisions.
The catch: The open headline is about location, not about paperwork or secrecy. Banks must follow a separate rulebook before customer information goes to any outside supplier, and that rulebook was completely replaced on 11 December 2024. Company accounting records held abroad must still have summaries sent back into Singapore. And a stricter rule in any other Singapore law beats the privacy law outright.
Does this apply to me?: Yes. The privacy law reaches a company that has never set foot in Singapore. It defines an organisation as any body of persons whether or not formed under Singapore law and whether or not it has an office here. There is no revenue or headcount threshold to fall below, and no in-country agent to appoint. You must name at least one person responsible for compliance and publish their contact details, but that person may sit anywhere in the world.High confidence
Can the data leave the country?: Yes, it can leave, and this is the unusual part: we searched banking, payments, insurance, securities, health, telecoms, government, education, gaming, mapping and defence and found no rule anywhere that forces personal data to stay in Singapore. What the law asks for is protection, not location. Before data goes abroad you must make sure the recipient is under a legal duty to protect it to a standard comparable to Singapore's.High confidence
What do I have to do to send it abroad?: There is no list of approved countries, no list of banned countries, and no form to file. You need one thing: the recipient must be under a legally enforceable duty to protect the data to a comparable standard. Most companies do this with a contract they draft themselves, because Singapore does not publish a template. Group companies can use internal group-wide rules instead, and since 2 March 2026 a recipient holding a Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules certificate also counts.High confidence
Who enforces this — and are they actually working?: The Personal Data Protection Commission, which is the same body as the media and telecoms regulator wearing a different hat. It is genuinely working: it publishes batches of decisions and settlements several times a year, with the most recent batches in 2026. Financial firms answer to the central bank as well, and anyone running critical national systems answers to the Cyber Security Agency. All three are staffed and issuing instruments.High confidence
How long must I keep it, and when must I delete it?: Both directions apply. The ceiling: you must stop keeping personal data once the purpose is finished and there is no legal or business reason to hold it, and there is no fixed number of days attached to that. The floor: company accounting records must be kept for at least five years, tax records for at least five years from the relevant year of assessment, and employment records for the latest two years, kept one year past the date an employee leaves.High confidence
What happens when something goes wrong?: There are at least three separate clocks and they run at very different speeds. Privacy: once you have decided a breach is serious enough to report, you have three calendar days to tell the regulator. Finance: a bank or other supervised firm has ONE HOUR to tell the central bank about a severe incident, then fourteen days for a root cause report. Critical national systems: TWO HOURS by phone to the national cyber agency, then a fuller report within seventy-two hours.High confidence
What's the trap?: Five things that are not in the summary. One: an individual employee can go to prison for two years for leaking personal data, and that is separate from any fine on the company. Two: any other Singapore law beats the privacy law, so banking secrecy and similar duties override it. Three: every organisation must stop using national identity card numbers as passwords by 31 December 2026. Four: the data portability right is printed in the Act but has never been switched on. Five: the banking outsourcing rulebook everyone cites was cancelled in December 2024.High confidence
What's about to change?: Three real things are in flight. A new health law has been passed but not started, and it will add its own breach reporting clocks for anyone handling health records. A draft law for big data centres and big cloud providers went out for public comment on 1 July 2026 and closed on 22 July 2026; it is not law yet. And every organisation must stop using national identity numbers as passwords by 31 December 2026. Separately, watch two switches the government can flip with no consultation at all.High confidence
Hardest industry wall: All industries — Companies Act 1967, section 199

LithuaniaChecked 18 August 2026

Depends on your industryWork: HighEnforcement: Active

In one paragraph: Lithuania has no general rule that data must stay in the country. Private companies follow the European rulebook: data can go abroad once the right paperwork is in place. The wall is in government. The data behind the state's most important computer systems must sit in Lithuanian state data centres — and a copy of the most critical state data must be kept abroad on purpose.
The catch: The easy answer stops being true the moment you sell computing to the Lithuanian state. State information resources are graded into four importance levels. The top two must be held in state data centres inside Lithuania. The bottom two may sit in a foreign or private data centre, but a copy must still be kept in a Lithuanian state data centre — and the government has only approved data centres in European Union, European Economic Area and NATO countries. Lithuania also runs a 'digital embassy': copies of the most critical state data are deliberately stored outside Lithuania so the state survives an invasion. Banking, payments, insurance, securities, telecoms and online gambling have no storage-location rule that we could find. Health records are not walled off by a location rule, but almost all of them flow into a state health system that lives inside that government wall.
Does this apply to me?: Yes. A company with no office in Lithuania is still caught if it offers goods or services to people in Lithuania, or watches what they do online. There is no size or revenue threshold to hide under — a two-person company is covered exactly like a bank. If you have no office anywhere in the European Union, you must appoint a representative inside the Union who can be contacted by regulators and by the public.High confidence
Can the data leave the country?: For an ordinary business, yes. Lithuania has not added a national storage-location rule on top of the European rules, so data can leave once you have the standard European paperwork. The exception is government. If a computer system counts as a state information resource, Lithuania grades it by importance, and the two top grades must be held in state data centres inside Lithuania. The two lower grades can sit abroad, but a copy must still be kept in a Lithuanian state data centre. Lithuania also forces the opposite move for its most critical state data: a copy must be kept outside the country, in what it calls a digital embassy.Medium confidence
What do I have to do to send it abroad?: Lithuania uses the European model: a destination is off-limits unless you have an approved route out. The easiest route is an approved-country list, which is populated and currently includes the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Brazil and others, plus United States companies signed up to the European Union–United States Data Privacy Framework. If your destination is not on the list, the normal answer is a set of standard contract clauses published by the European Commission. Lithuania adds one local step: if you want to use your own custom contract wording instead of the standard clauses, you need written permission from the Lithuanian regulator first.High confidence
Who enforces this — and are they actually working?: The main regulator is the State Data Protection Inspectorate, and it is genuinely working. In 2025 it received 2,081 complaints, up 48 percent on the year before, ran 26 inspections and had 54 staff. By 31 July 2026 it had already published 122 decisions for the year. But the fines are small: it issued only five fines in the whole of 2025, the largest being 9,000 euros (about 9,800 US dollars). Lithuania also has a second, less well known data regulator for journalism, and a separate cyber regulator inside the defence ministry.High confidence
How long must I keep it, and when must I delete it?: Both directions apply and they pull against each other. The ceiling comes from Europe: you must delete personal data once you no longer need it for the purpose you collected it for. The floors come from Lithuanian sector rules and from retention tables issued by the Chief Archivist. Some floors are very long. Health records in the state e-health system are kept for the patient's whole life plus three years, then archived for 75 years. Online gambling systems must keep their logs for at least 90 days. When a floor and the ceiling clash, the floor wins for as long as it lasts, because keeping the data is then a legal duty.Medium confidence
What happens when something goes wrong?: Count at least two clocks, and they do not agree. If personal data is exposed, you have 72 hours to tell the State Data Protection Inspectorate. If you are covered by the Cybersecurity Law, a serious cyber incident must be reported to the National Cyber Security Centre within 24 hours — a full day earlier — with a fuller assessment at 72 hours and a final report within one month. Other incidents get 72 hours. Financial firms have a third clock under European digital resilience rules. Lithuanian organisations are visibly bad at the first clock: only 63 percent of breach reports in 2025 arrived on time.High confidence
What's the trap?: Five things that are not in the summary. Children can consent for themselves at 14 in Lithuania, not 16, so an age gate built for the European default is wrong here. You may never publish a Lithuanian personal identification number, and you may never use one for marketing. Complaining about a government body is worth less than you think, because fines on public institutions are capped at 30,000 or 60,000 euros. There are two data regulators, and journalism goes to the other one. And if you sell cloud services to the Lithuanian state, your data centre may simply be ineligible.High confidence
What's about to change?: Two dated changes matter in the next twelve months, and both are European. From 12 January 2027 every cloud provider must let customers move their data out for free — no exit fees at all. Around the same period, the technical security requirements of Lithuania's cyber law start biting for organisations registered in April 2025, roughly two years after registration. The bigger Lithuanian risk is not a new law at all: the government can change where state data must live by resolution, without going to parliament and without consulting anyone.Medium confidence
Hardest industry wall: Government — Lietuvos Respublikos valstybes informaciniu istekliu valdymo istatymas, 45 straipsnis
Government — Lietuvos Respublikos valstybes informaciniu istekliu valdymo istatymas — vidutines ir mazos svarbos istekliai
Government — Skaitmenine ambasada — Vyriausybes nutarimas ir Valstybes informaciniu istekliu valdymo istatymo pakeitimai

The eight framework questions answered for each selected country
Question	SingaporeChecked 18 August 2026	LithuaniaChecked 18 August 2026
The three ratings	Yes, with paperwork Work: Medium Enforcement: Active	Depends on your industry Work: High Enforcement: Active
In one paragraph	Singapore lets personal data leave the country, and we found no industry that is forced to keep data on Singaporean soil. What you must do instead is make the person receiving the data legally bound to protect it as well as Singapore law does. There is no government list of approved or banned countries and no permission to apply for. The privacy regulator is real, staffed, and publishes decisions.	Lithuania has no general rule that data must stay in the country. Private companies follow the European rulebook: data can go abroad once the right paperwork is in place. The wall is in government. The data behind the state's most important computer systems must sit in Lithuanian state data centres — and a copy of the most critical state data must be kept abroad on purpose.
The catch	The open headline is about location, not about paperwork or secrecy. Banks must follow a separate rulebook before customer information goes to any outside supplier, and that rulebook was completely replaced on 11 December 2024. Company accounting records held abroad must still have summaries sent back into Singapore. And a stricter rule in any other Singapore law beats the privacy law outright.	The easy answer stops being true the moment you sell computing to the Lithuanian state. State information resources are graded into four importance levels. The top two must be held in state data centres inside Lithuania. The bottom two may sit in a foreign or private data centre, but a copy must still be kept in a Lithuanian state data centre — and the government has only approved data centres in European Union, European Economic Area and NATO countries. Lithuania also runs a 'digital embassy': copies of the most critical state data are deliberately stored outside Lithuania so the state survives an invasion. Banking, payments, insurance, securities, telecoms and online gambling have no storage-location rule that we could find. Health records are not walled off by a location rule, but almost all of them flow into a state health system that lives inside that government wall.
Does this apply to me?	Yes. The privacy law reaches a company that has never set foot in Singapore. It defines an organisation as any body of persons whether or not formed under Singapore law and whether or not it has an office here. There is no revenue or headcount threshold to fall below, and no in-country agent to appoint. You must name at least one person responsible for compliance and publish their contact details, but that person may sit anywhere in the world.High confidence	Yes. A company with no office in Lithuania is still caught if it offers goods or services to people in Lithuania, or watches what they do online. There is no size or revenue threshold to hide under — a two-person company is covered exactly like a bank. If you have no office anywhere in the European Union, you must appoint a representative inside the Union who can be contacted by regulators and by the public.High confidence
Can the data leave the country?	Yes, it can leave, and this is the unusual part: we searched banking, payments, insurance, securities, health, telecoms, government, education, gaming, mapping and defence and found no rule anywhere that forces personal data to stay in Singapore. What the law asks for is protection, not location. Before data goes abroad you must make sure the recipient is under a legal duty to protect it to a standard comparable to Singapore's.High confidence	For an ordinary business, yes. Lithuania has not added a national storage-location rule on top of the European rules, so data can leave once you have the standard European paperwork. The exception is government. If a computer system counts as a state information resource, Lithuania grades it by importance, and the two top grades must be held in state data centres inside Lithuania. The two lower grades can sit abroad, but a copy must still be kept in a Lithuanian state data centre. Lithuania also forces the opposite move for its most critical state data: a copy must be kept outside the country, in what it calls a digital embassy.Medium confidence
What do I have to do to send it abroad?	There is no list of approved countries, no list of banned countries, and no form to file. You need one thing: the recipient must be under a legally enforceable duty to protect the data to a comparable standard. Most companies do this with a contract they draft themselves, because Singapore does not publish a template. Group companies can use internal group-wide rules instead, and since 2 March 2026 a recipient holding a Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules certificate also counts.High confidence	Lithuania uses the European model: a destination is off-limits unless you have an approved route out. The easiest route is an approved-country list, which is populated and currently includes the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Brazil and others, plus United States companies signed up to the European Union–United States Data Privacy Framework. If your destination is not on the list, the normal answer is a set of standard contract clauses published by the European Commission. Lithuania adds one local step: if you want to use your own custom contract wording instead of the standard clauses, you need written permission from the Lithuanian regulator first.High confidence
Who enforces this — and are they actually working?	The Personal Data Protection Commission, which is the same body as the media and telecoms regulator wearing a different hat. It is genuinely working: it publishes batches of decisions and settlements several times a year, with the most recent batches in 2026. Financial firms answer to the central bank as well, and anyone running critical national systems answers to the Cyber Security Agency. All three are staffed and issuing instruments.High confidence	The main regulator is the State Data Protection Inspectorate, and it is genuinely working. In 2025 it received 2,081 complaints, up 48 percent on the year before, ran 26 inspections and had 54 staff. By 31 July 2026 it had already published 122 decisions for the year. But the fines are small: it issued only five fines in the whole of 2025, the largest being 9,000 euros (about 9,800 US dollars). Lithuania also has a second, less well known data regulator for journalism, and a separate cyber regulator inside the defence ministry.High confidence
How long must I keep it, and when must I delete it?	Both directions apply. The ceiling: you must stop keeping personal data once the purpose is finished and there is no legal or business reason to hold it, and there is no fixed number of days attached to that. The floor: company accounting records must be kept for at least five years, tax records for at least five years from the relevant year of assessment, and employment records for the latest two years, kept one year past the date an employee leaves.High confidence	Both directions apply and they pull against each other. The ceiling comes from Europe: you must delete personal data once you no longer need it for the purpose you collected it for. The floors come from Lithuanian sector rules and from retention tables issued by the Chief Archivist. Some floors are very long. Health records in the state e-health system are kept for the patient's whole life plus three years, then archived for 75 years. Online gambling systems must keep their logs for at least 90 days. When a floor and the ceiling clash, the floor wins for as long as it lasts, because keeping the data is then a legal duty.Medium confidence
What happens when something goes wrong?	There are at least three separate clocks and they run at very different speeds. Privacy: once you have decided a breach is serious enough to report, you have three calendar days to tell the regulator. Finance: a bank or other supervised firm has ONE HOUR to tell the central bank about a severe incident, then fourteen days for a root cause report. Critical national systems: TWO HOURS by phone to the national cyber agency, then a fuller report within seventy-two hours.High confidence	Count at least two clocks, and they do not agree. If personal data is exposed, you have 72 hours to tell the State Data Protection Inspectorate. If you are covered by the Cybersecurity Law, a serious cyber incident must be reported to the National Cyber Security Centre within 24 hours — a full day earlier — with a fuller assessment at 72 hours and a final report within one month. Other incidents get 72 hours. Financial firms have a third clock under European digital resilience rules. Lithuanian organisations are visibly bad at the first clock: only 63 percent of breach reports in 2025 arrived on time.High confidence
What's the trap?	Five things that are not in the summary. One: an individual employee can go to prison for two years for leaking personal data, and that is separate from any fine on the company. Two: any other Singapore law beats the privacy law, so banking secrecy and similar duties override it. Three: every organisation must stop using national identity card numbers as passwords by 31 December 2026. Four: the data portability right is printed in the Act but has never been switched on. Five: the banking outsourcing rulebook everyone cites was cancelled in December 2024.High confidence	Five things that are not in the summary. Children can consent for themselves at 14 in Lithuania, not 16, so an age gate built for the European default is wrong here. You may never publish a Lithuanian personal identification number, and you may never use one for marketing. Complaining about a government body is worth less than you think, because fines on public institutions are capped at 30,000 or 60,000 euros. There are two data regulators, and journalism goes to the other one. And if you sell cloud services to the Lithuanian state, your data centre may simply be ineligible.High confidence
What's about to change?	Three real things are in flight. A new health law has been passed but not started, and it will add its own breach reporting clocks for anyone handling health records. A draft law for big data centres and big cloud providers went out for public comment on 1 July 2026 and closed on 22 July 2026; it is not law yet. And every organisation must stop using national identity numbers as passwords by 31 December 2026. Separately, watch two switches the government can flip with no consultation at all.High confidence	Two dated changes matter in the next twelve months, and both are European. From 12 January 2027 every cloud provider must let customers move their data out for free — no exit fees at all. Around the same period, the technical security requirements of Lithuania's cyber law start biting for organisations registered in April 2025, roughly two years after registration. The bigger Lithuanian risk is not a new law at all: the government can change where state data must live by resolution, without going to parliament and without consulting anyone.Medium confidence
Hardest industry wall	All industries — Companies Act 1967, section 199	Government — Lietuvos Respublikos valstybes informaciniu istekliu valdymo istatymas, 45 straipsnis Government — Lietuvos Respublikos valstybes informaciniu istekliu valdymo istatymas — vidutines ir mazos svarbos istekliai Government — Skaitmenine ambasada — Vyriausybes nutarimas ir Valstybes informaciniu istekliu valdymo istatymo pakeitimai