from Hacker News

Hetzner is terminating contracts with all users who had a Russian postal address

by cybice on 12/8/23, 1:39 PM with 125 comments

• by jacquesm on 12/8/23, 2:10 PM

  Two years + 6 weeks of notice, that would seem to be enough to make a move. This was in the cards for a long time and I noted in the first weeks of the war that anybody from Russia with assets in the West would be smart to move them because sooner or later they'd be at risk. Note that the real artery isn't hosting but DNS and if there are more similar actions at registrars or even at ICANN (see the 'NameCheap' thread) then that will have as much or more impact. Hosting is usually manageable (unless you are tied into hosting provider unique services, such as AWS).

• by Dudester230602 on 12/8/23, 2:25 PM

  A lot of confusion there, so let me chime in and clarify:

  1. The war is not an inconvenience, it's a disaster.

  2. You had at least 1 year to move elsewhere.

• by buserror on 12/8/23, 2:08 PM

  I hope this is not going to be a massive hit for them financially -- I like Hetzner. On the flip side they might have some cheap 'server auction' on the block soon, I've been pondering a cross/upgrade for a little while already :-)

• by CAP_NET_ADMIN on 12/8/23, 2:15 PM

  Good, maybe Hetzner IP ranges will become a little cleaner :)

• by byyll on 12/8/23, 3:34 PM

  So big enough companies that have the resources to relocate elsewhere are safe but random citizens aren't. I understand they did it because they were forced to. Sad to see them go.

• by severino on 12/8/23, 2:58 PM

  Probably Russia is ok with this too. Russian money that was going to the EU (and later used against Russian interests) will now go to somewhere else, maybe to friendlier countries.

• by gizmo on 12/8/23, 2:26 PM

  Does any company fire their American customers because of the calamitous Iraq war and related war crimes? Do companies fire their Israeli customers because of the current bombing campaign? What about Argentinian customers? Melei has contempt for European style democracy. Should Chinese customers get the boot because of the horrific treatment of Uyghurs by the Chinese Party? Should Hetzner also fire their German customers while they're at it because of German arms exports to oppressive regimes?

  Isolationism isn't the answer here. We live in a globalized world and by integrating our economies we disincentivize war and strife. Maybe Hetzner is acting out of principle, maybe they choose to do this because of optics. In any case, it's the wrong move both pragmatically and idealistically.

• by throwaway4good on 12/8/23, 2:15 PM

  So why now? Almost 2 years after the invasion.

  My guess is that Hetzner got tired helping intelligence services bug their customers:

  https://www.devever.net/~hl/xmpp-incident

• by dijit on 12/8/23, 2:04 PM

  1 month to migrate is pretty dire.

  I would hope that they at least offer some kind of "pay for a year up front" kind of deal so that you can actually plan a migration.

  Quiet reminder that the actions of politicians and the actions of businesses/people - while not mutually exclusive - are usually quite disparate.

  I do feel for the citizens and business that do not endorse Russian aggression who: by accident of birth, find themselves on the wrong side of history.

  I also feel for any ops who may have to do a painful migration over Christmas due to this.

  That notion of course does not to take anything away from the victims of the Russian invasion; which is many orders of magnitude worse of course.

  EDIT: Downvoted because why?

• by eps on 12/8/23, 2:23 PM

  > We recommend that you take appropriate measures now.

  Change your postal address if it's (still) Russian?

  As per some Russian devs I know, this worked for the vast majority of service providers that issued similar statements in the past. As cynical as it sounds.

• by yread on 12/8/23, 2:40 PM

  Unfortunately, a lot of russian companies (especially the dodgy ones) are registered in Cyprus

• by KomoD on 12/8/23, 2:29 PM

  I mean yeah... that was kind of expected.

• by Semel on 12/9/23, 7:51 AM

  Quite a few of Russians have been using Hetzner's servers to host VPN services for personal use, for their family members, friends...

  /sarcasm on

  Thank you Hetzner, for making it so much easier for Putin and his Goebbelses to brainwash

  Russians and turn them into North Korean zombies..

  /sarcasm off

  Roskomnadzor keeps blocking sites in Russia en masse, and Western governments keep enacting policies that keep us from accessing the truth and fighting the state propaganda.

  Hetzner's decision won't hurt Putin and his regime in the slightest. In fact, it will make it even stronger..

• by babelthuap on 12/8/23, 1:51 PM

  Much sympathy. My spouse had a 401K with a portion of it in "Mediterranean assets". She got a letter saying those were Russian assets in reality. All gone, sorry.

  It however worked out better by default. She was so infuriated she closed the 401K and bought an investment property which we work on together. I haven't seen her this excited in a while. We work on the property on the weekend together.

• by Moldoteck on 12/8/23, 2:00 PM

  so even if postal address is changed, it will still mean termination, why?