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Yup, I signed last weekend, they asked me for a passport and I deleted the account immediately. Scaleway also asks for ID. I am gonna try OVH next.

by crote5 hours ago|

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I actually sent them a picture of my passport, and they still denied my account.

Hetzner was widely recommended and I was more than happy to pay a premium for their supposedly-excellent service, but I guess they didn't want my money.

Oh well. Went with OVH instead, and haven't had any issues since.

by asats5 hours ago|

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Same exact story here, they denied my account despite me sending them everything they requested, no explanation given. Went with OVH and had zero issues.

by alpineman5 hours ago|

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I mean it's not great that Hetzner require this but it's a bit of a jump to assume that means they have links to Russian intelligence. This kind of thing is pretty common in Germany; not every private company is captured by Russian intelligence

by theturtletalks5 hours ago|

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Yes, no connection to WireCard but reading about that situation made me pause about giving my passport. At that point, I was like I’m trying to save a few bucks a month and risk is not worth it. Now if you’re buying their huge servers and are saving thousands, I can see why someone would do it.

They also don’t ask every person for the passport picture so maybe me using a custom DNS and VPN might’ve triggered something on their end.

by locknitpicker5 hours ago|

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> I was signing up for Hetzner years ago and it asked me to upload my passport to use their service.

I don't really understand what bothers you so much about providing a photo of a "passport" (if you are an European citizen they require a ID card) but credit card info didn't registered as a concern worth noting. Can you explain what is the difference?

by tengwar25 hours ago|

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Credit card is a largely fixed risk of financial loss, with some legal safeguards for recovery, and the ability to get a replacement card with a different number. Passport carries an open long-term risk of impersonation and you can't just get a new passport because some company has a copy. Just the financial side of that risk can have much greater impact. Unless a company has a legal requirement to "know your customer", e.g. a financial institution, this is a red flag.

by theturtletalks5 hours ago|

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Couldn’t have put it better myself. Even with payment processors, most they ask for is SSN and business EIN.

When I read about the WireCard scandal, the KYC stuff sent to them over the years is probably in the hands of foreign intelligence already. That’s what gave me pause.

by mschuster915 hours ago|

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> Unless a company has a legal requirement to "know your customer", e.g. a financial institution, this is a red flag.

Germany also has legal KYC requirements for web hosting and most other things relating to telecommunications.

by tengwar21 hours ago|

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And if those requirements include the need to supply passport information, that's a reason not to host in Germany.

by jpalomaki5 hours ago|

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When many sites are collecting these photos, it increases possibility of them leaking. Since these are also used for KYC process in crypto sites etc, this in turn increases risk of identity theft.

by nozzlegear5 hours ago|

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I'm a Hetzner user in the US, but I pay for it with PayPal and was never asked to give my passport or identity. Americans are very rarely asked for these documents online, and even then it's typically only for government or financial services. It's also drilled into us that this info can be used for identity theft, so it's only natural to be wary of any non-government entity asking for them.

FWIW, if Hetzner had asked for my passport when I signed up, I would not have given it either.

by whywhywhywhy5 hours ago|

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If there isn't a difference shouldn't my credit card be enough?

by babuskov2 hours ago|

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If they are spies, they are taking their time to use the data for sure. I run servers with them since 2009 or so. That's 17 years.

I feel like the whole password thing was meant as a protection against SPAM or using servers for nefarious purposes as they know who's really behind every server.

Although, I can also see how real criminals would work around that easily by supplying fake identities. Sounds like one of those "why we can't have nice things". Well, at least the password I gave them 17 years ago has expired since.

by mort965 hours ago|

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I was doing the same here, trying to set up a Hertzner account. Getting away from US companies and buying European and all that. But after I had made the account (and wasting a lot of time on back and forth with their buggy sign-up flow), I got told that I needed to upload a picture of my passport to do anything.

Fuck no. I too decided to stick with DO.

by misiek085 hours ago|

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Nice work from DO marketing team! Prices are completely not comparable and Hetzner was fighting scammers and kiddies, because low prices worked like a magnet for those.

Russian spies? WOW, the earth got really flat these days. Seeing what US is doing with citizens and private companies I would love some Russian spy to be interested in exactly mine, boring passport.

by mort965 hours ago|

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Look I'm just a dude who happened to land on DO a decade ago due to podcast ads and now wants to move away from it. Not due to prices but because I would prefer a European alternative. I didn't bring up Russian spies and I don't know if there's any validity to that story, I just don't want to upload passport pictures to random services. Their competitors don't require it.

I'll probably find the time and energy to move to OVH or something some time.

by theturtletalks5 hours ago|

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I encourage you to read about WireCard. It wasn’t just a normal sham company, it was able to fool auditing firms (one of the big 4) and the executives got away with it and are in Russia hiding. I’m trying to dig up the video also I can link it. There is no connection between WireCard and Hetzner outside of both being German companies.

by jacekm3 hours ago|

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And they're not just hiding, Jan Marsalek is allegedly actively managing FSB operations against European states.

by glenstein4 hours ago|

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Time to dust off the Whataboutism Is Bad speech again: but don't glaze over yet, because I might say something new. Not only is it still as rhetorically fallacious as it has ever been to treat complaints about third parties like they are responsive to first order concerns, but also (wake up! here comes the new part!) the deeper problem with whataboutism is that it assumes people can't consistently object to both.

I don't expect this to persuade, to be clear. I don't believe that people engaging in whataboutism are unable to understand why it's wrong so much as they have a different approach to language that detaches it from accountability to any sort of conceptual coherence that people are normally searching for when testing integrity of arguments; commenting on it is more about revealing a difference in which background values inform the way you choose to communicate.

by glub1030114 hours ago|

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