Hetzner is cancelling all of our servers without reason

edited September 30 in General

We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit called Unredacted, which operates services and infrastructure that help people evade censorship and protect their right to privacy.

Today we received a notice that Hetzner is cancelling all of our servers, and without any prior warning. They do not give a reason, and their decision is final. We've always paid our bills on time and have never received an abuse report.

Edit: To be clear, we are not operating any open proxies or censorship circumvention services on Hetzner IPs.

Most of our critical infrastructure runs on top of Hetzner, and this will disrupt our important work while migrating everything to another provider.

In the spirit of transparency, it's important to know why critical infrastructure is being pulled out from underneath us. We'd like an explanation from @Hetzner_OL at the very least.

We understand that they can terminate an account for any reason, but this is not typical of most providers to do for an account in good standing. If this can happen to us, it could happen to you as well.

Unredacted is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides free and open services that help people evade censorship and protect their right to privacy

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Comments

  • You should probably avoid German companies for this kind of project, it is among the worst possible countries for it.

    Highly unlikely that they will provide any meaningful explanation here.

  • edited September 30

    I concur, Hetzner hates anonymity tools and organizations who help with censorship evasion.
    You should be looking for less mainstream providers that will care about you, @MannDude and @HostSlick can definitely help.

    I'm aware of your work and use services provided by you everyday, and I thank you for doing what you do.

  • edited October 1

    Sorry but hetzner is sh*t, i would never use it, basically no host in germany :)

    https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use-notice-unlimited-unlimited

  • @unredacted said:
    Edit: To be clear, we are not operating any open proxies or censorship circumvention services on Hetzner IPs.

    Most of our critical infrastructure runs on top of Hetzner, and this will disrupt our important work while migrating everything to another provider.

    As others have said, Hetzner and German providers in general are a poor choice for anything even slightly out of the norm - it shouldn’t be the case and nobody can be expected to simply know this, but it sadly is what it is.

    Interestingly though, it seems you mainly provide censorship evasion services and other privacy focused services. If you’re not running these at Hetzner, how are servers there considered critical infrastructure?

    Thanked by (1)Mustafamw3
  • @adly said: German providers in general are a poor choice for anything even slightly out of the norm

    They just haven't been the same after 1945.

  • @Janevski said:

    @adly said: German providers in general are a poor choice for anything even slightly out of the norm

    They just haven't been the same after 1945.

  • @Janevski said:

    @adly said: German providers in general are a poor choice for anything even slightly out of the norm

    They just haven't been the same after 1945.

    Whose fault eh?

  • @adly said:

    @unredacted said:
    Edit: To be clear, we are not operating any open proxies or censorship circumvention services on Hetzner IPs.

    Most of our critical infrastructure runs on top of Hetzner, and this will disrupt our important work while migrating everything to another provider.

    As others have said, Hetzner and German providers in general are a poor choice for anything even slightly out of the norm - it shouldn’t be the case and nobody can be expected to simply know this, but it sadly is what it is.

    Interestingly though, it seems you mainly provide censorship evasion services and other privacy focused services. If you’re not running these at Hetzner, how are servers there considered critical infrastructure?

    Late reply here, but we run our XMPP & Matrix service on Hetzner.

    Additionally, we do run some services there, but they do not use Hetzner IPs and are tunneled to and from Hetzner.

    Unredacted is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides free and open services that help people evade censorship and protect their right to privacy

  • edited October 6

    @unredacted said: Late reply here, but we run our XMPP & Matrix service on Hetzner.

    Will they be moved over to Incognet?

  • @treesmokah said:

    @unredacted said: Late reply here, but we run our XMPP & Matrix service on Hetzner.

    Will they be moved over to Incognet?

    Yes they will. Preparing for that migration asap.

    Thanked by (1)treesmokah

    Unredacted is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides free and open services that help people evade censorship and protect their right to privacy

  • @unredacted said:

    @treesmokah said:

    @unredacted said: Late reply here, but we run our XMPP & Matrix service on Hetzner.

    Will they be moved over to Incognet?

    Yes they will. Preparing for that migration asap.

    How much more expensive are they, or did you get a special deal and they are price-matching Hetzner?

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles
  • @cmeerw said:

    @unredacted said:

    @treesmokah said:

    @unredacted said: Late reply here, but we run our XMPP & Matrix service on Hetzner.

    Will they be moved over to Incognet?

    Yes they will. Preparing for that migration asap.

    How much more expensive are they, or did you get a special deal and they are price-matching Hetzner?

    https://unredacted.org/about/supporters/
    https://x.com/unredacted_org/status/1842616379033186598

    Thanked by (2)cmeerw unredacted
  • edited October 7

    @cmeerw said:

    @unredacted said:

    @treesmokah said:

    @unredacted said: Late reply here, but we run our XMPP & Matrix service on Hetzner.

    Will they be moved over to Incognet?

    Yes they will. Preparing for that migration asap.

    How much more expensive are they, or did you get a special deal and they are price-matching Hetzner?

    It's about 3x more expensive for dedicated, but IncogNET is providing the server at cost which we really appreciate.

    They did donate some virtual servers as well, which was very helpful.

    Thanked by (2)cmeerw wankel

    Unredacted is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides free and open services that help people evade censorship and protect their right to privacy

  • caasifycaasify Hosting Provider

    What was the account type? Individual or company?

  • edited October 10

    @caasify said:
    What was the account type? Individual or company?

    Company account. We provided proof when registering a while back, and they approved our account.

    Unredacted is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides free and open services that help people evade censorship and protect their right to privacy

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