Comment by irahul | Hacker News Reader

Comment by irahul | Hacker News Reader

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I mostly agree with what you say.

I was a bit angry because they didn't mention this at the time of signing up. It might be somewhere in the t&c but I think this kind of information should be explicitly told viz. we require your passport and credit card photo to sign you up with our service.

I didn't like the callousness with which they request the information. Another commenter mentioned he talked to them and they said only last 4 digits of the card would do for the photo. Now isn't this the kind of information they should be providing along with the request?

I understand I am giving them my card data for payments and the photo of my card contains less data than what is already there with them. But there are legal requirements for storing credit card info on which I can count. There are no such requirements for a photo of credit card exchanged over mail.

> The data I'll be putting on hetzner servers is much more valuable than the image of my passport

I was more concerned about credit card. I did find the passport request a bit weird, but then I had the same line of thought as you - a copy of my passport is with my employer, my landlord, custom offices and a bazillion other places. Identity theft is a possibility but an established business comes very low on the list of threats.

> I understand why you would be hesitant to give these things up as an american-- when I first started doing business internationally, I was very hesitant as well.

I am an Indian living in India. India as a nation is a late entry in online playgrounds, and as a result, most of us are skeptic when dealing online. As I detailed in my parent post, I mostly use my virtual credit card to make the payments with the limit set to the amount I am going to be charged to avoid being scammed(page says x, you charge me 100x). That is not a concern with established businesses though.

> a copy of my passport is with my employer, my landlord, custom offices and a bazillion other places

It is? Where do you live that this is a normal thing?

> I am an Indian living in India.

Unless you were looking for something more specific.

Just curious; it seems very odd to me - definitely something that would be strange to most people in the US.

Is that common practice in India, are are your circumstances unusual?

As a brazilian, I find it somewhat strange, but not that much.

Not only we have a national ID system (not one, but two systems, both with unique numeric IDs), we are required to photocopy them, along with proof of residence and several other things (for instance, something to prove that you do have an income and how much), in order to perform simple actions such as cellphone purchases (with a plan). You'd have to provide "only" your ID (CPF) with a pre-paid plan.

To be employed at most places, that same info has to be provided, more or less (you don't need to prove income, but you'll probably be required to provide a criminal record).

This is probably because of how trustworthy we are perceived to be. Nothing gets done without at least a proof of identity (sometimes, even using check or credit card purchases at regular stores). Not to mention the fact that we are..."advised" to carry ID papers everywhere, and the police will be somewhat displeased if they decide to take an interest on you and you have nothing with you to prove who you are, even though I am not aware of anything resembling a "Stop and Identify" law. I was never asked to provide ID, though. Were I black and poor, my guess is that it would have happened several times already, along with random street searches.

All that said, I've never had to provide my passport to anyone, anywhere, except US embassies. Most brazilians are not required or even expected to have one (and is not required when travelling inside Mercosul).

> It is? Where do you live that this is a normal thing?

When I joined my first job, my employer asked for my passport(id proof), college mark sheets(unless you score x, you aren't eligible for the job), high school mark sheet(10th and 12th grade - some employers require a min of x grades to be eligible) etc. It's quite common for the employer to ask for the id proofs and grade sheets for the first job. I held only one job, that too fresh out of college; so I can't tell what documents are required when you change jobs.

As far as landlord goes, there is a legal requirement that landlords know the identity of the tenants. For their own safety and to fulfill legal requirements, landlords ask for some sort of id proof. It need not be passport though.

You are renting a server in Germany. If you were a german citizen, they would ask you a copy of your id. Since you are a foreigner they ask you for a foreigner identification, which is the passport.

Aside from the passport, when I first rented a server there I had to send a ¡PHOTOCOPY¡ of my credit card and send via FAX. That was the truly weird thing :)

I tried everything to not send things via fax, but then I understood that they must receive hundreds of request from fake people with fake id and fake credit card. If they don't have at least the photocopy of those it means that you're probably a fake trying to get a server with someone else data.

In the end I decided to send the data anyway, since it's a huge corporation and they're based in Germany. If it was based in some shady place, I would never send the data.

Same procedure in South Africa, though generally the local identification document is used not the passport. For example to get a cellphone contract: Proof of residence (utility bill), the ID mentioned above, a bank statement and a payslip.

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