My client buy/sell machineries and in the industry, in his line of work lawsuits is not uncommon hence he’s wondering his emails may be disclose to public under court order etc and if going offshore hosting(netherlands etc) may be better.
His business is located in Asia, mainly Malaysia and the hosting he is now on is from a Malaysian hosting company.
We wouldn’t want to use a shady hosting company that supports porn, warez etc as we do run a legitimate business, we just want to be protected.
Are we just paranoid or it’s better to go with an offshore hosting company just to be safe, if so do you have any recommendation?
I suspect that he will still need to provide those communications even if his hosting is offshore for the simple reason that his company needs to follow the laws of whatever country is based.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that he needs to ask you (or us) this question. This is very specific and does need to be confirmed with a lawyer. Since, as you say, lawsuits seem to be everyday business in his field, his lawyer could research this information for him with little overcost and then he will know then for sure if there’s any advantage.
Apart from that, I assume that your client is taking the appropriate actions to avoid those lawsuits by analyzing why he’s having them and doing whatever is needed to stop them (be it increasing the quality of the machinery, his sale process, post-sale service, etc). But then, that’s something you can’t help him with.
As molona said, he should consult a lawyer. But the layman’s advice I would give is for him not to put anything in emails that might be dodgy or incriminating in the first place.
I am no lawyer, but in my eyes, taking your server offshore will not help you if you are dragged into any legal proceedings. I don’t see how a court of law can’t subpoena documents because they are offshore. I see no difference in where the site is hosted. Google piratebay.org news, you’ll get the idea, though this is obviously a higher profile case.
I think he’s right to look offshore for hosting. While going offshore is not foolproof, at least the Maylasian Government would have less ability to access his data hosted offshore. Yes, he might have to turn over emails, but at least if he’s offshore, he has the ability to turn over what he wants to turn over. If his data was hosted in the same country he was located in, the Government would just seize the servers or raid the datacenter in Maylasia.
I would recommend looking into a hosting company in the Netherlands or Panama like HighSecured.com.
Good luck!
Are you a legal consultant? How do you know this to be true? Josh, you need to know that you’re not going to get an answer on these forums. You need to speak with someone who knows your legal system.
While I agree with K. Wolf that you should also seek legal advice in Malaysia before finalizing a decision, you can also get valuable advice from forums like this. This is not Brain surgery, it’s partly common sense (If your servers are locate outside of Malaysia, how can they seize your servers?) And partly from working in the Offshore Hosting field for 6 years <snip>. Key steps:
When choosing a country for Offshore hosting, make sure the Malaysian Government has no sharing agreements with the country you’ve chosen to host in.
Check with a legal advisor in Malaysia before purchasing your new hosting
Good luck!
Some advice: if you are going to do business with clients who are worrying about their legal situation you need to protect yourself from them rather than getting involved in it by providing legal advice to them and recommending how they host their site.
Better advice: if you are going to give legal advice to someone, you’d best get it from an attorney rather than anonymously on the internet
Really you did K. Wolf? Because I appealed that warning to TechnoBear’s boss the Group Leader, and he agreed with me that I was not self-promoting and removed that warning. So I’m guessing you have some magical ESP power to have that figured out because:
I do not have my Offshore business listed anywhere in my signature or name.
In the first post I made, #8, I recommended my competitor, HighSecured.com. Hard to self-promote when you give your compeitor’s name.
Also in thread #8, I suggested that two of the best places to offshore host now are the Netherlands and Panama. My business does not offshore in either of those two places, so I didn’t self-promote very well did I?
I only mentioned my own Offshore business later in post #10 after you questioned my ability to speak about offshore. Anyone on the internet can say, “I’ve got 6 years experience in Offshore Hosting,” I backed that up with my business name and information so you could see for yourself that I could speak about Offshore Hosting.
There are legal forums all over the internet where you can “START” your legal search to begin thinking about issues, and of course you end your legal search with an expert lawyer. Should we get rid of all legal forums and online legal advice then? Of course not, most people are grown-up enough to know this is a forum, some of the advice on any topic is bad advice.
Online legal advice gives them ideas of where to begin and helps them to figure out what kind of lawyer they should seek. As I always tell those who I give Offshore advice to, (and as I told Josh in my previous post), always end your legal search with an expert lawyer in your own country:
You skipped the most important part of my post. I don’t have a problem with asking legal questions on forums - I enjoy that. But, if you are advising a client who you seem to thing might be involved in something sketchy, maybe a forum isn’t the place.
Sorry I did miss your point. I Agree 100% with your point, if the client is involved in something sketchy, a public forum is one of the worst places to ask. Government agencies are sophisticated now and can probably follow your message back to the source if they have time on their hands.
Back to the other poster’s point for a second, that legal advice shouldn’t be dispensed on forums. While in America we can get free initial consultations and sometimes free legal advice, in 3rd world countries, a forum may be the closest thing to legal advice some impoverished people receive. We take it for granted, but many people’s of the world will never be able to afford to talk to a lawyer. For them, something is better than nothing, even if the advice isn’t always perfect.
