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My company is Canadian and I'm planning to purchase a VPS account for my business with a Dallas,TX based company. But I'm being told by a friend that this may be a problem for the following reason:

Apparently it’s illegal for a Canadian based company to run on servers outside of Canada? Something to do with Canadian public information being accessible to foreigners.

Does anyone know if this is true?

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up vote 5 down vote accepted

Not quite correct.

You are, as a Canadian company, allowed to host your website where you want, whether in Canada or elsewhere. However, what your friend may be referring to is something called PIPEDA which governs what you can and cannot do with information entrusted to you electronically.

No matter where your servers are, since you are in Canada, and your company is a Canadian company, you must abide by the Canadian rules. The fact that your servers are not located in Canada will not exempt you from abiding by Canadian law.

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Great answer! Thank you! – Ray Mar 14 '12 at 21:31
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I found some links that may help clarify this:cloudlawyer.ca/2011/04/cloud-computing-and-privacy-faq.html and techsoupcanada.ca/community/blog/cloud_privacy_law – Ray Mar 14 '12 at 21:32

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