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Hetzner deactivated account without any reason
I just created account at hetzner cloud yesterday and submit my National ID for verification. today they replied my account is deactivate but there is no certion reason they disclosed.I asked them but no reply yet. No vpn used while creating or using account. credit card, profile details and NID details all the matching 100%. here is the email they send me below:
Dear Mr ****
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
Thanked by 1netomx
Comments
OK. Nice statement.
It's perfectly fine for a business to define who they want and who they do not want as a customer, regardless of giving reason. In the past, when we rejected a customer, the first thing they did was publicly shame us for being 'rascist' (yes, I quote the spelling mistake), to which I strongly disagree.
Might be best for you to accept their judgement and move on. Plenty of fish in this sea, if one does not want you, you should not want them either. Go with someone with whom you'd feel at home.
One Should Explain Why They don't want someone as customer when they are doing business in open world. Explain there is good reason to decline specific someone or simply say we do business only whom we like.
When they don't respond you directly with the reason, its usually because they are afraid of legal issues.
Usually they do tell the customer the generic reason.
Hence this leaves 3 options:
Usually its just plain and simple racism. If you can rent an apartment to local family vs indian or african descent family, 90% will pick the local family since they are afraid of late payments, financial stability, complaints, communication/cultural problems or damage to the product. Same logic applies here.
You can just buy from reseller instead and get more for cheaper or switch to competitor.
(emphasis mine)
But that's what they did!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that that's fine and dandy. I can understand your frustration but, oh well, that's the way it is.
I am not so pro user or doing so much crappy things to be enlisted on some shared DB so do they find me there. Only possible thing can be My Nationality. Because I am From Bangladesh which they might have problem with. But i think there is too many users from my country which using cloud services from big providers.some of them paying around $100k to aws, gcp, azure. But i should be one of the customer whom Usually they do tell the generic reason
The issue is not that they wont want to do business with you, its the fact you sent them your ID Card with all Social Security Numbers, and photos, etc. and they then decide to ban you and don't even tell why.
One could assume that its passport/identity harvesting operation based on that info alone. If you require so much data and then you just remove the person without even stating why, that's what makes it unfair. You should do a GDPR request for them to delete all your information immediately. If they refuse, make a complaint via net form to GDPR authority in Germany.
I'm a Hetzner customer myself, but they really have shit policies. If they were gonna ban you anyway, they should not had requested any passport pictures.
"because of some concerns we have regarding this information" is the "generic reason".
Also, as per their TOS, "We may, at our sole discretion, choose not to accept any orders.", which should cover this as well.
OVHCloud pretty much disables certain nationalities straight if they register to the public cloud by using the 200€ free credit and do not top up.
This is your issue. Hetzner/OVHCloud do not generally welcome Bangladesh,Lebanon,China customers due to various reasons.
Mostly abuse. I am from a very sanctioned country and I had no problem registering with most US and European providers.
Bangladesh is not a sanctioned country.However if you dont want me as a customer after asking my NID/Passport, just tell me why and delete all my data.
You can try to register again with different email or with the same email if they allow it, this was the case for me with OVH.
The point is that they don't need to tell you why -- they don't need to give you the details
There have been a number of similar threads regarding this
It's natural to feel a bit annoyed or upset when you're rejected, especially if you feel that it isn't justified, but in the case of hosting providers, it's best to simply move on
There's quite a bit they can actually do if it happens right after they get visual photocopy of your passport and you are not given any plausible explanation after you have provided GDPR identity data.
Nobody just cared enough to suspect or cause problem to a company with size of Hetzner.
It becomes illegal when there is a suspicion that your data is used wrong or if ID documents are otherwise harvested on mass scale without any plausible explanation for such behavior's.
All you have to do is tip off the GDPR office of Germany about this practice, and if they ignore it, you can tip off TÚI which is the auditor of Hetzner about this shady practice. Even if its just headache, they can cause insane amount of workload and costs just by reporting their experience and referring few other past cases which are not hard to find by checking google.
It's just too much work for a revenge cause you were "fooled" of your ID details and then rejected. Hetzner could easily cover their ass by citing their abuse policy or saying that they think the risk for abuse is too high. But they opted to not tell this information to avoid giving the customer a possibility to argument any further.
Of course, we can't be absolutely certain that Hetzner deletes the ID documents within a fixed/reasonable amount of time, but it would seem too risky for them not to do this -- too risky with respect to the law and too risky with respect to their reputation
I have had my accounts at Sendinblue/Brevo, SendGrid, and MailerLite automatically terminated with some nonsense reason. It's likely because they see a lot of spam activity from my country. Sucked for me, but can't really fault them for wanting to avoid spam hotbeds. Went with mxroute and have been very happy.
Imagine if you walked into a bar, paid for the clothes storage deposit, the doorman asks you to present your ID. He walks to a scanner with your passport, makes a photo copy of it, hands the photocopy to office lady and walks back to you and says: "I'm sorry you need to leave", takes off your drink from your hands and throws you out and then asks for the next guy to present his passport, and you see the exact same situation happen again. In between the passport harvesting, about half are allowed in.
You ask "what the fuck is this?", but you are not given any reason, nor you are told what happens with your account (passport in this case). All means of communication are now gone too as they wont answer any further questions. You start to think that they just wanted to harvest your passport information and threw you out.
The establishment would be seized under a day and investigated for identity theft.
When did Bangladesh joined EU so he can claim GDPR?
Plus Hetzner is using some 3rd party for that - I don't you can do much as they most likely never seen that passport ID/scan
The issue is what happens during the next year before its deleted, and why this info is not communicated back to rejected customer.
GDPR is specifically designed to protect the personal information of EU citizens and residents. Therefore, it only applies to EU citizens and residents inside the EU. However, it also applies to all companies that process the personal data of EU citizens, regardless of whether or not a company is based in the EU.
All identity data is in the same place, and all identity data must be handled the same way in such situation. Even if they are not covered by the GDPR as non-citizens, the company itself must follow GDPR methods and practices. You just get extra protection by being EU citizen.
You cant claim any damages, but you can still cause harm for the company by reporting it.
@bdspice - Maybe you should move on. They simply do not want you - this is all the information that matters. You do not have rights in this case, since there is no contract and no payment between you and Hetzner. Hetzner does not want you - quite simple. Maybe you should just move on instead of killing your neurons for any provider. This is likely because of the risk involved (just an assumption), but you are not the first nor the last case - this is all normal.
Again, none of us can be absolutely certain that Hetzner isn't harvesting people's ID data, but unless there's evidence (a reason) to think that they are harvesting people's ID data, I would be inclined to trust them in this respect
Alternatively, if one doesn't trust Hetzner in this respect, then why even bother to try to be a customer of theirs?
Lol, I’m a US resident that was using valid PII, a card with my name on it that matched the zip code purchased, and no VPN.
I had never received a DDoS attack or anything and suddenly my Hetzner account was disabled after months of successful payments and borderline idling, too. No torrents, no high CPU usage, nothing.
They also did not give me a warning and immediately pulled my services and access to my account offline.
That was years ago and I wrote them off and never used them again.
Between the money I pay monthly for hosting and the recommendations I’ve placed for recommended hosting providers I use, they’ve lost thousands of dollars for being overzealous.
Fuck ‘em, that’s on them. Move on, give your money to someone worth it.
@bdspice
Btw, I once benchmarked a Hetzner VPS (in the 4- 5€ range) for a friend and frankly, I was disappointed by its rather mediocre performance and low bang for the buck. Really no loss for you (other than your feelings).
That's like asking why did you trust a scammer. You had no idea at the time of transaction.
If someone does something suspicious, you usually change your image of them regardless of how you thought about them before.
Theranos was a well respected company right until everything went to shit.
Bigmotor was also respected in Japan until they were caught of fucking up customers cars just to scam more money on repairs.
I believe a company should want as many clients as possible and as many profits as possible.
There is a shifting in power going on worldwide. The world is splitting between 2 superpowers as governments try to destabilise the world. Such moves might actually have political agenda behind them. Luckily, there are many other providers out there and the planet will not stop from spinning because of Hetzner.
Their verification system is a robot, and it is completely random to decide whether to pass or not. Of course, filters may be set for different regions or even different names, but most of them are randomly determined by the system and can be tried multiple times. Their verification system is very poor and there is no manual inspection.
Are you an AI? Why would Hetzner want User X from China to purchase a $5 VPS when it will ultimately cost them $20 in support staff time?
I felt the same way. They received a copy of my documents, then deactivated my account for no reason.
Because it might not cost them $20 in support time. It is hard to evaluate the power of negative reviews as one simple toxic review on a VPS can negatively impact your image towards people wanting a whole dedicated machine. Sometimes is best to just bite the bullet and accept small losses. I am no expert in marketing, but I guess it all depends.
Meanwhile... I am not an AI - but I would love to be one, to (think) process many things in one nanosecond. I consider your comparison a compliment, so thank you.
cba to read it all but note that this was the user bragging about his malware sites