Hetzner is like 1/10th the cost of ripoffs like AWS now, the passport data is deleted after verification and I can actually trust this claim coming from an EU company under GDPR that doesn't have any use for my personal data. You can also just bypass the passport requirement entirely by making a €20 Paypal deposit to the account.

You just hear too many horror stories of data being leaked. Even if Hetzner uses a 3rd party system to do the verification - that 3rd party probably has to store your pics for some time.

But at least if there is an alternative then great.