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Comment by Hetzner_OL | Hacker News Reader

Hi there, as some untrue news is making its way about this case: There was a notice of termination via email with a deadline in accordance with our T&C, on 30 October 2024. Our team has already been in contact with this customer several times and we also have the transmission protocol of the communication. You can all rest assured that we do not close accounts randomly. There is always a specific and legitimate reason for doing so, such as abuse of our services, not following our terms and conditions, etc. So please make sure you comply with our T&C: https://www.hetzner.com/legal/terms-and-conditions/. --Katie, Hetzner Online

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Could we get some more information on the matter?

Over the past years there have been numerous people online which have claimed that Hetzner closes accounts without giving a reason. I'm sure most of those claims intentionally omit some details to make it look like they didn't infringe the T&C.

However as a Hetzner customer (a small one, to be fair), I'd still like to know that those complaints are baseless, and that I can still trust your company.

This is the relevant part from their T&C:

2.7. Furthermore, we reserve the right to terminate the contractual relationship without notice for good cause.

The full part reads

Furthermore, we reserve the right to terminate the contractual relationship without notice for good cause. Such good cause is deemed to exist, among other reasons, if the Customer fails to meet its payment obligations or violates other important customer obligations. A further important reason which may result in us locking or terminating the Customer’s services or account without notice is if the Customer uses content that impairs the regular operating behavior or the security of our infrastructure or our product, or violates paragraphs 8.1. - 8.3. of these Terms and Conditions.

I think Section 8 "Use of the services / content" is likely more relevant in this case.

Given one of their goals on their homepage is "access to internet ... [due to] ... outright censorship" (which is legally required in some countries), likely they are in violation of

"8.1. The Customer is obligated to check and comply with the legal provisions arising from the use of the contractually agreed services"

and

"8.4. If we become aware of illegal activities, we are obligated under Art. 6 Abs. 1 DSA (Digital Services Act) to request that the Customer immediately removes the offending content and we are entitled to lock the Customer’s access to their Hetzner services or account."

Hey Katie happy to hear from you. I'm glad you can finally document the communication (and not just when people start making noise on the internets). You should have our address but just in case it's been, uh, misplaced, please forward your email dated 30 October to contact @ kiwix.org

This below is where we got started - the ref number should make it easy for you to sort: > Procedure: L0020649F > Person: [redacted] / Kiwix > Cause: Hello, > > Starting this morning (December 1st at 00:00 UTC), our servers went down. > We received zero email nor notification of any kind from you. > Looking for a way to contact you, I looked into this Unlock tab that list an incident > that matches the time the problem started. > > It's been close to (12) hours already, without a single message from you. Our services > are down. > > In the Robot dashboard, there is no server listed. In the Traffic statistics page, it > says we have no IP. > In the Cloud dashboard, we cant even enter, it says Access Denied. > > What's going on? The billing page is reachable and it indicates we paid all our > invoices and the next one is to come in 5 days. So it's not a payment issue. > > I checked > https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/troubleshoot... > > I am not sure if we're locked because the traceroute does not lead to > blocked.hetzner.com > Because the server is not listed, we cant use the whitelist or any other tool. > > Please restore the service immediately. > Please let us know what kind of issue there is if there is one. > > Only restoring SX65 #2453510 (135.181.224.247) is urgent. The two cloud ones can be > sorted out later.

We got two more emails from Hetzner the day after that (Monday 2) but none addressing the root issue. Our account access had been locked by then anyway so we had to call up Germany; you should be able to document that as well.

Not sure HN is the best place to compare notes but hey, happy to meet you where you feel comfortable responding.

If you agree to let them publish the email, they could post it here? As they seem keen to engage with the public over the matter.

I have already been in contact with the customer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hetzner/comments/1ha5qgk/comment/m1... --Katie

That doesn't show any of the news being untrue as you initially claimed here.

Here https://www.reddit.com/r/hetzner/comments/1ha5qgk/comment/m1... Kiwix appears to concede they did originally send an email (by virtue of not kicking up a fuss any further). Though it's unclear if they forwarded the original with headers, or they simply sent the original message in a new email. The latter is of course proof of nothing

Kicking off customers due to vague T&C violations is on thing, but deleting their data without giving them a chance to get it out is something else entirely, especially if you only notified the customer via email without confirmation of receipt or attemps to use alternative communication methods. Is permanently deleting data as soon as services are shut off standard procedure for your company?

> deleting their data without giving them a chance to get it out

What are you talking about? The comment you're replying to says:

> There was a notice of termination via email with a deadline in accordance with our T&C, on 30 October 2024.

> Our team has already been in contact with this customer several times and we also have the transmission protocol of the communication.

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