Nepal currently relies on the Individual Privacy Act 2075 as its main legal framework, but it struggles with enforcement in the complex digital world. The current conversation is dominated by the proposed Information Technology and Cybersecurity Bill. A major point of debate is data localization, which is the idea that data generated by Nepali citizens should be physically stored on servers inside Nepal. This creates a fragmented landscape where businesses are unsure about the future of cloud adoption.

Beyond Nepal, the global standard has moved past simple storage rules to complex AI governance. With new regulations like the EU AI Act, the focus is on “unlearning.” This means that if a user withdraws their consent, a company must not only delete their data from the database but also retrain their artificial intelligence models to “forget” the patterns they learned from that user. This is a technically difficult standard that is becoming mandatory.

The emerging shift is toward unconditional opt-out rights. In the local market, users often have to agree to data collection just to use an app. Globally, privacy is becoming a premium product feature. Companies are actively marketing “Zero-Knowledge” architectures where they prove to the customer that they cannot access the user’s data even if they wanted to, giving the user complete control over their digital footprint.