Rip-off at the website Godlike Productions

This website has a forum with some interesting contributions (you can find most of these elsewhere, too). You can register there for free, but even then you will soon be told that you have been banned:

“SORRY - YOUR IP ADDRESS xx.xx.xx.xx HAS BEEN BANNED FROM VIEWING THIS WEBSITE  If you have an upgraded account you are immune [!] to bans while logged in. Please log in now to browse the site.  If you have a free account you may also log in now and upgrade your account to get immunity from bans. If you still don't have an account you may create an account now and then upgrade it to get past bans (and get access to other exclusive features).”

After requesting an unban, this message is repeated, with the addition: “If you choose not to become an upgraded member of GLP [i.e., to not pay] you will have to wait for the ban to be lifted before you will be able to view this website. Please check back later.”

Comments in […] are my own.

The ban disappears by itself after a not very long time (probably after you last tried to enter, so if you try to enter during the ban, you are likely to prolong this time period). But you can get past it immediately and even “vaccinate” yourself against it – if you PAY!!!! From $10.- for a month up to $ 100.- for a year!! So that is the obvious purpose with the “ban”: to pull money out of your pocket! And under such circumstances clearly not for something like a “precaution” for them against spamming or hacking, even if they make it look like that. I have seen such a rip-off at no other Forum (and it reminds me of the mafia practice to make you pay for your own protection)… A better way to circumvent this is to enter the website via a proxy that has another IP address. That also works. Or just wait a few hours. Or better: to ban the website from your own computer! Because according to this it isn’t very “godlike” at all, but rather the other way around (unless one here understands “god” as “godfather” in the mafia sense)…

Another in their bag of tricks is that if you click a link on the website, it redirects you only just a few times, but very soon you are instead again taken to the page that demands that you pay! Yet some time later the links work again.

It is like websites that show a clock counting down seconds (sometimes even a few minutes) before you are passed on – unless you have a paid subscription – only more nasty.

THE LATEST TRICK is that the want to make a contract with you before letting you into their website... ...

Cf. this website, and this, and this.