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Comment by pocksuppet | Hacker News Reader

We should note these are not even slightly legitimate hosting companies, lest anyone worry too much about their non-KYC offshore servers. These aren't hosting companies that ask little, they are just directly front companies for Russian intelligence, owned by members of Russian intelligence, they don't do anything else, they don't provide hosting service to regular people even if you want it (I have tried).

Unlike in Germany where I lost several social media accounts because my email service provider (pissmail) went to jail because someone signed up for his service and sent spam.

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>they don't provide hosting service to regular people even if you want it (I have tried)

That doesn't sound right. I used PQ.Hosting once when I needed a quick temporary VPS, just like many other legitimate users. Yes they never asked much, but they also used to ban users left and right even for torrenting, so it wasn't bulletproof in any meaningful sense. I'm sure they were into shady stuff though, since their IP quality used to be absolute crap, but they did provide legitimate services as well.

legal threats of torrenting == lots of attention. not really something that the SVR or GRU want on their secret servers.

plus they just gobble bandwidth. you want a bit to ensure your company looks real / makes some $$$ but you don't want to threaten your C2 nodes

> email service provider (pissmail)

I'm sorry this happened to you.

I too am sorry! Thank for taking the piss, while you did! hear hear!

it was a good alternative to cock.li for some time. alas

German authorities arrest people for running email services and then they are confused about why doesn't Germany have a Silicon-Valley-style tech industry.

Dear Dr [my name]

After reviewing your updated customer information, we have decided to deactivate your account because of some concerns we have regarding this information. Therefore, we have cancelled all your existing products and orders with us.

Best regards

Your Hetzner Online Team

---

This is the email that I received, after I mistyped my credit card data, when creating an account on Hetzner Cloud. You don't have to be a big cloud company to enforce the KYC rules to defend against fraud.

I wonder how big/small wa pissmail? Would be good to know where is the threshold of sanity:

1. staying with smaller providers is cheaper (and you usually get non-AI customer support)

2. at the risk of stepping into something that makes you lose your data (like you did)

Maybe don't use any German service you can't afford to lose. Their government hates the tech industry, no matter how much it sings its praises. Same government just labeled watermelons as illegal antisemitism, btw.

Any source to back up your claims? Otherwise it seemed pretty much a conspiracy theory to me.

The company inherited all their customers and equipment from a sanctioned company (according to the Dutch news report). Should be enough for most people.

That just means the sanctioned company was selling to sanctioned entities, not that it was only selling to them.

Who cares, that's a due diligence failure on their part. No consumers were involved. Do business with shady companies risk shady shit happening...

Sanctioned company != works for the government.

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