Offshore hosting FAQ
Common questions from people evaluating offshore VPS for the first time - jurisdiction, anonymity, payments, what you can run, and how operations work. Plain language, no marketing filler.
Jurisdiction
What does 'offshore hosting' actually mean?
Offshore hosting means your server is physically located in a country whose legal system does not automatically enforce foreign copyright or government data requests. A US DMCA notice sent to a Romanian hosting company has no legal force in Romania. The host would need a Romanian court order to act on it - and that rarely happens for the content types that get offshore clients deplatformed in the US. Offshore is not about hiding illegal activity; it is about choosing a jurisdiction whose rules match your threat model.
Where are AnubizHost servers located?
AnubizHost operates data centers in Romania (primary), Iceland, Ukraine, Netherlands, and Finland. Romania is the legal anchor of the operation - it sits inside the EU single market for connectivity but does not enforce DMCA and requires a Romanian court order before any disclosure. Iceland adds free speech protections at a separate geographic jurisdiction. Ukraine, Netherlands, and Finland round out the location options for latency and redundancy.
Is AnubizHost a Romanian company?
AnubizHost operates from a Romania-primary offshore jurisdiction. We do not publish corporate registration details on this site - that information is handled separately. What matters operationally is that the servers sit in the jurisdictions listed, and the legal posture of those jurisdictions governs what requests we respond to.
Can a government force you to hand over my data?
A government can issue a legal order. Whether we can comply depends on what data we actually hold. Because we do not collect names, ID documents, or payment card details, there is limited personal data to produce. Server content is on your hardware - encrypted or not is your choice. A Romanian court order would be required for any compelled disclosure from our Romania operations. We publish an annual transparency report listing the requests we have received.
Anonymity and signup
Do I need to provide ID to sign up?
No. AnubizHost does not collect government ID, passport scans, selfies, or phone numbers. Signup requires an email address. You can use a disposable or privacy-oriented email provider. Payment is in cryptocurrency. The result is that your account is not tied to your legal identity by anything on our side.
What counts as anonymous enough?
Your anonymity is only as strong as the weakest link you introduce. If you sign up with a Gmail address from your home IP and pay with an exchange-linked Bitcoin wallet, AnubizHost's no-KYC policy does not protect you from a chain-analysis subpoena to the exchange. For maximum anonymity: use a fresh email from a Tor-accessible provider, pay with Monero (XMR) purchased peer-to-peer, connect to the panel over Tor or a VPN, and do not reuse usernames. We provide the infra; the opsec is yours.
Can I run a VPN on my server?
Yes. Running a personal VPN server is one of the most common uses of our VPS plans. It gives you a dedicated endpoint outside your home country without sharing traffic with a commercial VPN provider's logs or user base. Romania and Iceland are both popular jurisdiction choices for this because of their legal posture toward traffic inspection.
Payments
Which cryptocurrencies do you accept?
We accept Bitcoin (BTC), Monero (XMR), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), USDT, and other major cryptocurrencies via our payment processor. Monero is the highest-privacy option because it is private by default at the protocol level - there is no public transaction graph. Bitcoin is transparent on-chain but can be made reasonably private through careful coin selection and mixing.
What if my crypto payment arrives slightly short?
We apply a 5% underpayment tolerance on crypto invoices. Network fees and exchange rate timing can cause the received amount to differ slightly from the invoice total. As long as the received amount is within 5% of the invoice, the payment is accepted as complete. If it falls short by more, contact support with your transaction ID and we will reconcile manually.
Do you offer refunds?
For VPS and cloud plans, we review refund requests on a case-by-case basis - if the service genuinely failed to provision or had a critical fault in the first billing period, we can issue account credit. Dedicated server rentals are non-refundable once the hardware is committed. Refund decisions are escalated to a human, not automated.
What you can run
What content is allowed on AnubizHost?
Legal content that the host in your chosen jurisdiction is not obligated to remove. That includes: adult content (where legal in the server jurisdiction), security research, political speech, journalism, leak sites and document archives, Tor hidden services, cryptocurrency nodes, game servers, privacy-focused web services, and VPN endpoints. We do not restrict content based on US law when the server sits in Romania or Iceland.
What is not allowed?
Content that sexualizes minors (CSAM) - terminated immediately, operator permanently banned, relevant law enforcement notified. Active malware command-and-control, botnet infrastructure, phishing pages, and active fraud operations are also terminated fast. These are not edge cases we debate internally. Free speech hosting is not the same as accountability-free crime hosting, and we do not treat them as interchangeable.
Can I run a Tor exit node or relay?
Yes. Running a Tor relay or hidden service is explicitly permitted and is a common use case on our plans. Tor exit nodes generate more abuse complaints than relays, so some clients prefer to run a middle relay or hidden service to reduce that noise. If you run a Tor exit on our network and receive automated abuse complaints, we forward them to you - they carry no legal weight in our jurisdictions and do not require you to act.
Can I run cryptocurrency nodes (Bitcoin, Monero, etc.)?
Yes. Full nodes, mining proxies, Lightning Network nodes, Monero remote nodes - all permitted. The resource profile of a full node (high storage, moderate CPU, high bandwidth) fits our VPS and dedicated tiers well. See the /full-nodes page for plans sized specifically for node workloads.
Operations
How fast is provisioning?
Most VPS plans provision automatically within minutes of confirmed payment. Dedicated server setups take longer because hardware assignment and OS installation involve manual steps - typically a few hours. You receive login credentials by email and in your client area dashboard as soon as the server is ready.
What happens if I do not renew?
There is a 7-day grace period after your service due date. During that window the server stays up and you can renew. After 7 days without payment the server is suspended. After suspension passes a further period, it is terminated and the data is deleted. You receive email reminders during the grace period.
Can I migrate my existing server to AnubizHost?
Yes. We do not charge for migration assistance. The /migrate page covers the process. For VPS, you typically create a new server, rsync your data, test, then point DNS. For bare metal workloads, the migration guide covers QCOW2 image imports and live migration approaches depending on your current provider.