SelfPrivacy is in “Open beta” and promises to make setup and use of email, messager, password management, video chat and other services simple by leveraging the likes of Hetzner, Cloudflare, and Backblaze.

I stumbled on the app while browsing the F-droid app “store” and had never heard of them. I think the proposition is neat and while I’m comfortable hosting most of these services myself, my curiosity has been piqued. Searching for it elsewhere on the web as far as privacy rating, reviews, etc has left me empty handed. I dont’ know if they’re just too new or not. So I’m curious if anyone has tried them out or looked into it further.

  • Goddard Guryon
    9•1 year ago

    I tried them a couple days ago, got to setting up Hetzner API, had my account rejected a bunch of times, found out Hetzner team is infamous for rejecting new accounts and cancelling old accounts by the whims of their ‘protection systems’, realized the only other hosting option supported by SelfPrivacy is Digital Ocean, noped out of it all

    • @[email protected]
      3•1 year ago

      They reject new accounts because they are really cheap and reliable so people abuse their system.

      • Goddard Guryon
        2•1 year ago

        I get the reason behind it, and support it too, but it doesn’t make a good impression when your account gets rejected despite every information being correct just because you signed up using a VPN (I can’t verify that VPN is the reason, but it has been suggested elsewhere to be a cause for suspicion on their part).

        • @[email protected]
          2•1 year ago

          Yes but if you think about it, you are not the only one trying to register with the same IP with hetzner that’s why the system triggers the ban.

          • Goddard Guryon
            1•1 year ago

            That wouldn’t make sense either, because the user literally has to provide them all kinds of personal information in order to register. And no matter which IP address is being used to register, the user still has to pay to even use their service. So rejecting accounts simply because the registration was done via VPN is, in the best case scenario, overkill.

            Don’t get me wrong though, I have nothing against them; I just don’t think their anti-spam measures are anywhere as good as they need to be, and their responses towards people complaining about them indicate that they wouldn’t bother trying to make it better.

            • @[email protected]
              1•1 year ago

              Yes you are right their antispam measure is very aggressive but I think plenty of bad actors have abused the service before that’s why its like that.