You are renting a server in Germany. If you were a german citizen, they would ask you a copy of your id. Since you are a foreigner they ask you for a foreigner identification, which is the passport.
Aside from the passport, when I first rented a server there I had to send a ¡PHOTOCOPY¡ of my credit card and send via FAX. That was the truly weird thing :)
I tried everything to not send things via fax, but then I understood that they must receive hundreds of request from fake people with fake id and fake credit card. If they don't have at least the photocopy of those it means that you're probably a fake trying to get a server with someone else data.
In the end I decided to send the data anyway, since it's a huge corporation and they're based in Germany. If it was based in some shady place, I would never send the data.
Aside from the passport, when I first rented a server there I had to send a ¡PHOTOCOPY¡ of my credit card and send via FAX. That was the truly weird thing :)
I tried everything to not send things via fax, but then I understood that they must receive hundreds of request from fake people with fake id and fake credit card. If they don't have at least the photocopy of those it means that you're probably a fake trying to get a server with someone else data.
In the end I decided to send the data anyway, since it's a huge corporation and they're based in Germany. If it was based in some shady place, I would never send the data.