[voyagerfan5761]

They might be preventing new malicious actors from signing up. Maybe. Catching a lot (anecdotally, from this thread) of legit users along the way.

Meanwhile, what have they done to catch and ban malicious actors who passed verification long ago and have been abusing other services on the internet from the safety of Hetzner's network for months or years?

[_a9]

From what I've experienced in the few years using them is that they're pretty strict on abuse, new account or not. I think initially they would null route all ips for the server when getting copyright reports but the past few times they would just email me the report and I had to reply with the fix or else they would null route (or maybe suspend) the server after a day or so of silence.

While I do run a mail server with them I've never had any reports so I can't say anything on that but I'd assume theyre equally or even more strict with email abuse reports they get.

[alwa]

We are, of course, tacitly assuming that all the users on this thread were in fact doing legit things from Hetzner’s perspective when they were caught up (and, given the ID verification, that they have unremarkable pasts from a risk perspective).

Although I’d be sore too if I were turned away in the signup process, I’d just as soon learn early that they don’t want my business, before I invest more time and effort getting moved in.