looking for a VPS with good specs for it's price, at the same time it should be as safe as possible, I don't want whoever's running it to have access to my files
the main thing I need is storage, like 300-400 gb of storage would be perfect, idk how much that'd cost tho
I can recommend buyvm. 500gb storage from them (hdd) is $2.5/m I think. You can mount it encrypted. Small hosts like that usually have enough trouble keeping up with the day's tickets that they can't spend time messing with your files unless there is a definite issue. Note that if you are serving semi public content (seedbox?) then by definition it's not very private. And no vps can be as private as using your own hardware.
I use 1984.hosting, they are an independent VPS provider that runs on 100% green energy. Already customer with them for 2 years. Last year I moved my email hosting to them (unlimited domain names and storage).
As mozz said, DigitalOcean is a good company, but looking for that much storage you would be spending upwards of $100/mo.
And if you are running anything illegal, you will likely have your instance investigated and have your ssh keys and password overwritten by whoever is hosting it.
If you are looking for something that is as private as possible, you would be looking for a bulletproof host, which will cost significantly more.
Assuming you aren't looking to run anything illegal, I also provide hosting, and you can reach out to me if interested.
Hetzner may have the thing for you. IIRC their VPS options don't have that much storage, but their storage plans are super cheap and easily connect to the VPS.
I use Linode but I'm sure there are better options. Be mindful of smaller companies and keep in mind data stored in the cloud or transfered though the cloud is not private.
For low-cost I have been using RamNode. They are a pretty established company and provide HDD options which are great if you want lots of storage at a reasonable price:
For those posting suggestions, do the providers also require KYC at some point?
I know for a fact that Vultr, Digitalocean, and Namecheap (and a few others people have mentioned to me before) will need your identity at time of purchase.
I can understand why verifying a customer's identity is important to these providers, but at the same time, I'm mostly worried that they will be the victims of some data breach in the future.
I'm guessing they want to cover their butt in case their server is used for something illicit. But even in searching for something as locked down as, say, a Minecraft server, I ran into the same issue.
It's strange, because generally you can use a fake identity and a masked card to purchase.. just about anything, really.
I don't want whoever's running it to have access to my files
Run an encrypted file store of some sort, keep the keys only in the memory of the process that serves the files, type it in to start the process, keep it completely off the server. That's not bulletproof (there's nothing you can do to completely prevent the server operator from having access to what's going on on the server) but in practice it'll probably be good enough.
Yah hence why I gave advice on how to do it if the person just wants fairly-good privacy.
Some other gave input as to where might be hosting that is fully private / illegal stuff friendly if they want that, also. But, if they're doing genuinely illegal stuff, a Tor .onion site might be better. If they just want hosting with some level of privacy for their stuff, then probably Digitalocean+encrypted file store will serve.