They were hosting a StackOverflow copy, which is OK because of Creative Commons. All my answers were still under my name as it should be.
The only difference to the original was my profile picture, which was an explicit porn image.
For several weeks everyone searching for my name or my StackOverflow answers saw that. I'm glad that I was not looking for a job at the time.
I exhausted all possibilities on all channels to rectify this situation short of using a lawyer.
I put a lot of effort into getting things in order and seriously considered going the legal route but ultimately decided against it mainly because courts are hit and miss here when it comes to reputation damage of regular individuals as opposed to companies or celebrities.
EDIT: I should have answered your question how this is Hetzner's fault more directly. The website they were hosting did not have the (in Germany) mandatory legal notice (Impressum) or any contact details. This shifts the responsibility to the provider (Providerhaftung). Also I would like to note that I did neither request them to give me their customer's details nor to shut down the site. All I wanted was them to work with their customer to have the offending image removed.
Also I am convinced the porn image was not malice but an accident. The scraper replaced all profile images with ones they probably scraped from a forum. I was just unlucky to get a very indecent one. Had Hetzner collaborated I'm pretty sure this could have been resolved in no time.
Hi there, would you mind giving me the abuse ID for this case. (When someone creates an abuse report with us, our confirmation email includes an abuse ID in the subject line.) If you still have that, and you would like me to ask a colleague about this case, please let me know.
--Katie, Hetzner Online
To the best of my recollection I was never assigned or at least told one. I was not a customer so when my contact attempts were not ignored or answered with boilerplate, I was asked for my customer details, which I could not provide. No customer details, no support.
The channels to reach you were pretty limited and hard to find when I tried. I assure you, I tried everything short of getting a lawyer to send you paper mail.
I still have the communication history in my archives, but it would be a little effort to dig it out.
EDIT:
Found the documentation. My first complaints were in March 2011. At some point I got assigned an abuse ID MU-000B0F55-1:18. In May the issue was still unresolved.
Hi again, Looking on the date for that, we don't have data about that case simply because of data protection laws that require us to delete data after a certain time. Does the abuse still exist? If so, perhaps you can create a new ticket (and include the old abuse ID from 2011 so that they understand you tried to report this in the past. You can also include a link to this thread in hackernews and mention my name.) When you submit your abuse report, you will receive an automated response with a new abuse ID. You do not need to be a customer to submit an abuse report with us. https://abuse.hetzner.com/en?lang=en Unfortunately, I cannot submit an abuse report on your behalf. --Katie
The only difference to the original was my profile picture, which was an explicit porn image.
For several weeks everyone searching for my name or my StackOverflow answers saw that. I'm glad that I was not looking for a job at the time.
I exhausted all possibilities on all channels to rectify this situation short of using a lawyer. I put a lot of effort into getting things in order and seriously considered going the legal route but ultimately decided against it mainly because courts are hit and miss here when it comes to reputation damage of regular individuals as opposed to companies or celebrities.
EDIT: I should have answered your question how this is Hetzner's fault more directly. The website they were hosting did not have the (in Germany) mandatory legal notice (Impressum) or any contact details. This shifts the responsibility to the provider (Providerhaftung). Also I would like to note that I did neither request them to give me their customer's details nor to shut down the site. All I wanted was them to work with their customer to have the offending image removed.
Also I am convinced the porn image was not malice but an accident. The scraper replaced all profile images with ones they probably scraped from a forum. I was just unlucky to get a very indecent one. Had Hetzner collaborated I'm pretty sure this could have been resolved in no time.