← Back to context

Comment by wkat4242

1 year ago

If you rent a VPS in supposedly privacy-conscious Germany they need photo id too :(

Luckily there's other cheap options in Europe like in France.

I don't think that is a legal requirement in Germany. At least Hetzner lets you rent a German VPS or dedicated server without ID. Though Hetzner may require you to submit an ID if you are flagged by their automated systems upon registration.

  • It was actually Hetzner that didn't want to provision my VPS without Photo ID. I blanked out the SSN as our government tells us to do and they balked at that as well. After I showed them my government's website explaining how and why to do that they were OK with it but at that point the relationship was already soured and I started looking for alternatives.

    Maybe they changed it now but they were asses about it then. I thought it was a legal requirement, they basically said as much though I don't recall the exact details, it was before the pandemic.

    Eventually I just moved to Scaleway in France which is much nicer and cheaper and you can even talk to their support on slack.

    PS: I don't do anything nefarious on my servers but I just don't want my ID on file anywhere it's not needed.