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Comment by stevekemp | Hacker News Reader

I've been a customer of theirs for less than a month. In that time I've had several problems.

For example I rebooted a host, and it didn't come back. For 10 hours it was down. After getting in touch with their support I was told "Oh yeah, there is a problem with the hypervisor, we'll fix it". Meanwhile their status-site showed "zero problems". (The next day it came back.)

Provisioning a stock (Debian) system results in a host with no working serial console, which makes it hard to rescue.

You can't make outgoing SMTP (25/587) access without giving them copies of passports, etc. Though if you enable IPv6 you'll soon discover outgoing SMTP works ;) Only downside there is you can't set reverse DNS for your IPv6 address.

(Reverse DNS? They require the forward address to point to you before they'll let you set it, as a "security measure".)

I'm using the host for offsite monitoring, but we'll see if it stays. Cheap, but perhaps too cheap.

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> (Reverse DNS? They require the forward address to point to you before they'll let you set it, as a "security measure".)

Many hosters I've dealt with have required this to prevent abuse from someone reading the rDNS and assuming the IP address is related to someone it is not.

I've heard this argument before, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

(Perhaps more annoyingly there is no ability to set reverse DNS for IPv6 the address allocated to a server.)

> You can't make outgoing SMTP (25/587) access without giving them copies of passports, etc.

That's odd, I simply opened a ticket and they enabled it for me.

I got in touch and their reply was as follows:

According to a security issue about your account, we would like to verify your identity to unlock the situation.

For this we will need you to send to this mail address XXXX the following document :

If you are are an Individual , we invite you to send :

        * A copy of your ID
         * A picture of yourself holding your ID

If you are are a company, we invite you to send :

        * A business Certificate

We will process your document as soon as we received them and will make contact with you.

Why asking you these documents ?

As you know some swindler steal the identity of other people and use their credit card number getting them in unscrupulous way. By asking you these proof, we will be all protected from these people.

The process link to this identification request as a goal to fight against fraud and unpaid bill.

All the document which will be sent will be received by departement taking care of fraud.

Hm, I wonder if it's some fraud heuristic situation where depending on your "risk level" they'll either approve/request more into.

It's interesting how most of the companies where I've heard of them asking for ID/passport (e.g. Hetzner, Online.net, Scaleway) are European.

Most American companies (e.g. DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, Vultr) will let you just create an account (often with free credit) and do whatever you want.

ID for outgoing SMTP is anti-spam measurement. Many other cloud have their IP blacklisted by different spam list.

Other ID works too. If you are using a credit card, just ask their support

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