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OVH US makes me feel awful
Recently I saw that us.ovh has a $0.97 per month server 
,
Sadly, I logged in with my ovh.ie account only to find it seems impossible,
Then I registered a new account and made payment.
Shortly after, I received an email with the following content:
_- A photo of yourself holding the government-issued Photo ID provided above. _
This mail really shocked me and immediately reminded me of some pictures like this:
Hoho, I should hold my ID if I want to buy a VPS which is only worth a few dollars. 
Seriously? It really made me feel ike a criminal ...Wow!
This is so funny. 
What I can say is wish I never bought any OVH products so I will never get an email like this. 
Thanked by 1Abd
Comments
I see a lot of people having to do this, yet took me 20minutes to get server without any issue are you using vpn or something? is it location based?
Boo boo. Clearly, requiring ID for certain people works out well.
I feel confident for my mugshot.
Looks at it this way. Do you want a super good/cheap deal? Then you have to ensure to them that you are not a risk since super cheap deals attracts risks.
This needs to be a new PFP.
@dahartigan
I can relate.
Yeah. Funny thing is you could have this thread and an "OVH has a huge spammer problem" thread right below it, and you might even see the OP of a thread like this one in the other thread saying something like "OVH should really curb the abuse of their network" while having zero sense of the irony.
Not to say that ID solves all abuse but OVH does indeed have a huge spam problem right now so cracking down at least until those spammers pick their next cloud to demolish makes some sense.
Mine is even less.
I'm assuming it's because:
1. Their IP is not located in US (or have a high risk in OVH's DB | Too many accounts?)
2. Their information is invalid (Not matching payment method / IP)
The ID does not solve the spammer issue AND, there are way cheaper "solutions" for spammers in cleaner networks.
I think this is more related to crackdowns on free speech or other kinds of real abuse, albeit a VPN would probably work on even the cheapest VPS bought with crypto and with a VPN or chains of VPNs you could use any kind of rig at home.
Heck, I could get a 1 USD a month vm in Russia with unlimited traffic and pay with crypto, I am sure there are better deals out there.
At Prometeus I was always against this shit, moreover, when people offer such pictures at their own initiative it is immediately rising red flags.
And our ranges are probably among the cleanest in the world.
Ok...There seem to be a lot of people who are receptive to such rude request...
$10 or $20 off on this VPS per year?
Perhaps I should remind myself that it's actually a lot of money...
Yes, some people didn't receive this. But this is not the place you show off your fluent experience.
They did ask many customers to upload IDs, if they don't trust you and you don't trust them, just leave it.
I had to do this with Coinbase. Presumably it is to prevent Credit Card fraud. There are databases hosted online where companies cross verify if someone who has signed up has a bad history with chargebacks online. There are also trigger words in the name, email and whether or not the address is verifiable online, and/or if you're using a VPN during signup.
I was asked for ID by OVH US as well but I forwarded them my OVH World nic handle and told them if they can skip it based on my history on the other OVH account, and it got approved.
Coinbase is different, they're legally required to do KYC since they're a currency exchange. All financial institutions have to do KYC in order to minimize money laundering and to prevent major fraud from taking place. All (legal) crypto exchanges that exchange cash to crypto in the US have to do it.
Nothing "solves" the spammer issue. It's about reducing the amount of spam, and I would say that this certainly does that.
Citation needed? You dont even provide a connection between "free speech" and "requires anonymity". OVH isn't the government, they have no way to crack down on speech that isn't anonymous.
Sure, you can, so do that then!
Such kyc verification is good unless provider declared they accept anonymous order. My POV
Done already.
I am not sure what do you mean. Forcing people to provide an ID picture has nothing to do with anonymity. They have to provide the payment data at least as OVH does not accept crypto. Free speech does require anonymity, but that is not what we are talking about here.
Again, what are you talking about? Why are you quoting me when you say these things?
I say a few simple things:
Yes, if this method would have helped in warding off criminals, by all means, use it, but it does not, really dangerous criminals have ways of faking it. This is like making legal immigration impossible and then you really have only the criminals entering illegally so you could say, see, only criminals come from that shithole country. Almost exclusively honest people suffer or are deterred.
This isn't the point. Spammers aren't criminals (or at least, not in that way). Spammers need volume. That is to say, OVH accounts that do spam get banned and they need to make new ones constantly to avoid their networks falling apart. They need a lot of accounts, and they need them quickly. Also, fake IDs wont be helpful if OVH can see that you're just the same person posing in the picture every time so they need to either deepfake pictures (again, hard and detectable) or get a lot of people to pose for pictures in front of their real or fake IDs (again, hard).
I would not provide OVH my ID, no. At the same time I do not find this request unreasonable. I think it's reasonable to decide that a user must provide KYC if you have reason to believe they may use your services in bad faith. Complaining that OVH requires a KYC is unreasonable because there are so many alternatives. It's like getting refused service at a restaurant and complaining to the world about it instead of just going to the next one.
I'm not sure where I see the risk? Putting aside people who cannot pay, unless you're suggesting that OVH is collaborating with these foreign governments then where exactly is the risk? Making a payment to OVH isn't in itself suspect in any way, having a server is a normal activity. Sending your ID to OVH isn't any more risky either. If OVH gets hacked, sure, but that is just an inherent risk for every company you do business with. Sure you could use Tor and buy all your servers with Monero, but that isn't for everyone and there are many services that will allow you to do that without issue.
Frankly, I'm not sure why you see this as people suffering. A company has refused to give you a service. Go to the next one. OVH isn't a monopoly, it has plenty of competitors that would be very glad to take your money (including crypto!). What "suffering" do you see?
I just wanted to point out.
I really wish spamming was tackled more aggressively and was extreme criminal. I really do wish all spammers got their buttholes opened by anal probe. Just... ugh. Spamming (especially text spamming) is just so annoying.
Nope, not hard and not detectable. In 2000 I was admin for a company which was providing sexcam acts. The platform in US required proof of age and the owner had blank IDs and control keys to create the needed "proof". All "models" were adults but refused to provide their IDs and the owner considered that reasonable. You could do that in 2000, you certainly can now, in droves. Cumbersome, certainly, doing it once or twice, doing it at a scale, in a day you can make 10-20 without being a pro, pro people can make 100+.
The risk of being hacked. If the database contains only the IDs of people already out of the country, no problem, if they contain the ones inside the country, that is risky.
This kind of thinking would have resulted in segregation never being abolished. What if niggers can't enter the restaurant? They could go to a niggers only one where they could have nigger food! It is not unreasonable to assume black people were poor and wouldn't be able to pay for a decent meal...
Same, that they are intellectually challenged or at least uneducated given the schools we provide for them and should not be allowed to vote unless they could jump through a lot of hoops...
Who decides who is more likely to be a criminal? Based on what?
I fully agree there are other providers, but there is a reason why there are anti-discriminatory laws. As a Romanian I am frequently denied service when I use my real profile. This does not stop me from having tens of services from many providers, about half in a fake name of some kind. If I were a criminal, I could get service from ANYONE, except maybe 3 letter agencies.
I never said that, it was about immigration, but even there, some countries are ready to take in immigrants and refugees. In this case, it is cumbersome and, in some cases, risky. Nobody really suffers as there are alternatives. That does not make it right, the main issue remains, would not stop criminals, just regular people. Prometeus NEVER accepted this even when sent "pre-emptively" and we have one of the cleanest range even when, at some point, we were having 100 new customers a day.
You are probably not considering the price factor. For some people, 15 Eur for a KS-LE special is already a lot and nobody offers such deals for dedis except for OVH. Criminals using stolen money could afford anything at any price since they are basically getting the service for free. That also doesn't help spammers as they only have one IP and they are in dirty ranges anyway, so your spam argument doesn't hold water. I have pointed out this is probably done for other reasons and I stand by my point.
ovh is no place for criminals, deal with it and move on
Yes it is. They have some of the dirtiest ranges and there were many reports of child porn hosting. One more proof such approaches do not work, they are only used to show "we are not sitting on our hands, we are doing something". Kicking spammers can be done in real time by using simple tools and one supervisor for tens of thousands of IPs or even much more.
The fact they are NOT doing that, shows this is not about criminals, probably for payment scams or to show they are doing something.
Such passion!
Sure KYC helps but is not for everyone. Like sending your ID for a 7 dollars/mo service, that's not worth it. In the end there is so much competition in the market that now you have the privilege of choosing who and where.
There is also the issue of good people living in countries where there is a high rate of fraud, they might get flagged accidentally, probably what happened with the op.
Why do you judge a kyc requirement based on the price you pay, that's intuitive but not true. When someone can register without ID but op needed to provide it, he felt uncomfortable, because he felt discriminated against.
If everyone using ovh is required kyc, he will be fine with that, at least not post here.
But I agree on the good people part, don't judge people by things they can't choose.
imagine this face and the attached body doing pushups makes my yabs going up
The enemy of good is perfection.
They don't need to be 100% successful, that's an unreasonable and unobtainable target. They just need to REDUCE the abuse for it to be worth it.
Haha,no way
ditch them to feel good
Without much collateral damage. That is very important, if we reduce crime by putting on trial and asking to prove they are not criminals every hispanic, black or asian in US, that is not worth it for many people, even some whites. Heck, MOST people won't be happy even if we wouldn't discriminate on race. There would be a lot of people unable to prove that while real criminals would game the system to their best ability and very few would be caught, mostly due to mistakes they would make. Would it reduce crime? Probably. Would it be worth it? You decide.
I doesn't work and I have given the best proof possible. Prometeus ranges are super clean and we never asked for any kind of such proof, just vetted every new customer whenever possible.
I mean, are there any non-fringe VPS providers that don't require this? It's either this or a credit card by your name.
I don't think such a deal exists ...