Privacy & no-KYC
What is no-KYC hosting?
No-KYC hosting is server hosting that does not require identity verification. No passport, no photo ID, no billing address and no payment card. An email address you control and a cryptocurrency payment are the entire signup. The provider therefore holds no identity information that could be breached, sold or compelled.
KYC — "know your customer" — is a set of identification duties imposed on regulated financial institutions. Hosting is not a regulated financial activity, so those duties do not apply to compute providers in the jurisdictions where we operate. Hosts that demand a passport do so for chargeback and fraud control, not because a statute requires it.
The practical consequence is structural rather than promissory. A provider that never collected your identity cannot lose it in a breach, cannot sell it, and cannot hand it over in response to a demand. That is a property of the architecture, not a policy that could quietly change.
- Held about you: an email address and a payment reference from the processor
- Not held: name, address, government ID, card details, phone number
- Provisioning: minutes, because there is no verification queue
See also: No-KYC hosting · KYC
7 answers in Privacy & no-KYC
- Is no-KYC hosting legal? Yes. There is no general legal requirement to identify server customers in the jurisdictions where OnionVPS operates. Anti-money-laundering identifica…
- How do I buy a VPS anonymously? Use a provider that requires no identity verification, sign up from a network that is not your home connection, use an email alias created for the pur…
- What data does a hosting provider collect about me? Most providers collect a name, billing address, payment card, phone number, government ID, signup IP address, and complete access and connection logs.…
- Do VPS providers keep logs of what I do? Most do. Netflow records, connection logs and panel access logs are standard, retained for 30 to 365 days, and in the EU and UK certain retention is l…
- Can a VPS be traced back to me? It depends entirely on the links you create, not on the hosting itself. A no-KYC server paid for in Monero and administered over Tor has no provider-s…
- What is offshore hosting? Offshore hosting means placing a server in a jurisdiction other than your own — usually one outside the Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing alliances a…