Hacker News Reader

Comment by dakiol | Hacker News Reader

Be ready to handover a copy of your national ID/passport

I've had a similar experience where my account was banned despite providing all the info they requested (including my passport).

Hetzner was the only provider where I was banned despite providing everything I was asked for. I've deployed services on plenty of providers (AWS, GCP, Digital Ocean, Vultr, etc) without issue.

Apparently, this has been an on-going struggle for them. A few weeks ago they were even called out on an episode of the syntaxFM podcast for this behavior after one of the hosts had his account banned [0].

It's still a bit of a mystery to me honestly. Is their fraud detection so poor where they're forced to ban new sign-ups in this manner? How can Hetzner's competition tell that these accounts are legitimate (without ridiculous requirements such as passport) and Hetzner can't (even when provided with full home address, passport, etc)? I'm assuming Hetzner can't because they've seemingly developed a reputation for banning legitimate developers and the only reason I can think of where they'd be fine with that is if they actually have a very difficult time telling whether an account is legitimate or not.

[0]: https://twitter.com/stolinski/status/1750226126499139665

They are like Ryanair and Lidl brands - you get a reasonable product super-cheap. Don't argue about the terms and conditions, just be happy to do business with us. If you don't buy, somebody else after you will. This is not classic VC-funded IT. It's mass-market, low margin, low risk consumer products. It's not Enterprise IT.

It's mass-market, low margin, low risk consumer products

None of those have anything to do with demanding that customers expose themselves to identity theft risk.

They banned my prepaid account, I had few bucks on left on it to test and evaluate some selfhosting services. I didn't try to ask for my money back as I saw it like a pointless time waste trying to contact them.

They didn't even ask me for that, straight up banned my account.

This will be required in the US for all providers within a year unless a sufficiently large number of people comment on the Commerce Department's proposed rule: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-department-commerce-...

Can you elaborate? I have a VPS and a storage box on Hetzner and I'm so far satisfied with it, minus the sometimes confusing interface between their different products.

Because they are so cheap, they are often used by spammers or other shady entities. So occasionally they may ask for ID. For example, if you connect from one country, use an address from another country and use prepaid card from yet another country.

used by spammers

Then why don't they just ask for ID if you want port 25 unblocked?

Doesn't add up.

The ports are blocked by default for new customers. After a few billing cycles, a request can be made to have it lifted.

They have never asked me for any of my three accounts. And one I paid with credit card the two other with bank wire.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com