points by theturtletalks 3 days ago | 0 comments
Look into the WireCard scandal. WireCard was the Stripe of EU worth billions. They were even audited by one of the big 4 firms and they confirmed it was a real company.
Turns out it was a front for Russian intelligence. Even after the German government found out, the guy still somehow escaped to Russia. There’s a solid chance that Russia operatives have infiltrated the German government. They was even a big hack Russia’s state hackers did and a lot of information was leaked.
I bring this up because Hetzner was asking for my passport to buy a $10/m server. Simple opsec says to just pay a bit more and use DigitalOcean or some other VPS.
[–] sofixa 3 days ago
[–] mort96 3 days ago
Yeah I tried to move to Hetzner, but bounced off when they wanted my passport info. I've since moved to OVH, where I get significantly more resources for the same money compared to DO, they're a European company hosting in Europe (getting away from US tech was the primary reason I was looking for DO alternatives), and they never asked for my passport!
There are many good non-Hetzner European hosting companies, luckily.
[–] purpleidea 3 days ago
OVH is also asking for id card photos, and full face photos, and I wish there were good hosting companies around.
[–] nekitamo 3 days ago
I can recommend Netcup in Germany. They didn't ask me for ID at the very least.
[–] purpleidea 3 days ago
They don't offer physical/dedicated servers. That's the key!
[–] nsoam 3 days ago
I have no idea what this has to do with the topic at hand. What does KYC from Hetzner have to do with Wirecard? Do you mean to say that you suspect that Russia is behind Hetzner?
[–] theturtletalks 3 days ago
That case was so baffling, it left me forever doubting German companies, especially ones that ask for my passport. A lot of businesses used WireCard, even the government itself.
[–] 2OEH8eoCRo0 3 days ago
The documentary about that was crazy. Like a real life spy thriller.
[–] Foobar8568 3 days ago
What? I don't remember that it turned out to be a front for Russian intelligence. WTH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Marsalek
[–] dralley 3 days ago
It was messy. A number of agencies of the German government, including a handful of intelligence agencies, used Wirecard for banking.
[–] dboreham 3 days ago
Russian operatives have definitely infiltrated the US government.
[–] nutjob2 3 days ago
Yes, but just one man, at the very top.
Wirecard were a German fintech, but didn't have big market penetration across Europe. They were a real company with real operations, but a decent part of its balance sheet was fake (supposedly it was in an Asian subsidiary, there was no money there). It wasn't a front for Russian intelligence, it's COO was a Russian operative (and nowadays runs a shadow intelligence agency from Moscow, using incompetent morons to try to kidnap journalists, or scheming to hire ISIS suicide bombers to blow them up); those connections only surfaced after the whole thing imploded. But the whole company was an actual real place with real operations and real non-russian intelligence employees. It's still not certain if the CEO knew about the COO for instance.
Read the FT series on the whole thing, their investigation started the collapse.