"[...] someone at Hetzner chose to forward
this complaint to the actual abuser him/herself. [...]
Unfortunately, according to trusted sources
(ex-employees) of Hetzner.de, this is policy and not an
exception."
I really hope this is not true.
In 2011 there started to appear pornography when I searched for my name in image search. The reason was that a stackoverflow.com scraper showed my answers (which I post under my real name) but my profile picture replaced with porn. I have no idea why he replaced the profile pictures in the first place, but anyway.
The scraper site was hosted at Hetzner. I phoned Hetzner. They told me to write to abuse@hetzner.de, which I did (in German). I received an auto-reply but nothing else happened. I tried to reach their phone support (09831 610061) several times during their business hours (Mo-Fr 7:30-18:00 Uhr) but no one picked up. I wrote several other mails to Hetzner but never received another reply.
After about seven months the scraper went down but I have no idea if it had something to do with my complaints because I never received any feedback from Hetzner.
I have know Idea who was behind the site. They could have found out about me anyway because I posted this publicly on meta.stackoverflow [1], but still: The thought that they might have learned about my identity through Hetzner is discomforting.
In 2011 there started to appear pornography when I searched for my name in image search. The reason was that a stackoverflow.com scraper showed my answers (which I post under my real name) but my profile picture replaced with porn. I have no idea why he replaced the profile pictures in the first place, but anyway.
The scraper site was hosted at Hetzner. I phoned Hetzner. They told me to write to abuse@hetzner.de, which I did (in German). I received an auto-reply but nothing else happened. I tried to reach their phone support (09831 610061) several times during their business hours (Mo-Fr 7:30-18:00 Uhr) but no one picked up. I wrote several other mails to Hetzner but never received another reply.
After about seven months the scraper went down but I have no idea if it had something to do with my complaints because I never received any feedback from Hetzner.
I have know Idea who was behind the site. They could have found out about me anyway because I posted this publicly on meta.stackoverflow [1], but still: The thought that they might have learned about my identity through Hetzner is discomforting.
[1] http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/81872/copycat-site-c...