The Shrine

I was messing around on some Chinese forums the other day and there's some stuff you got to be registered to view, so I figure I'll just sign up but then it says you got to download some executeable to register. Now this site is one of the bigger sites out there so it's probably legit, but I've never heard of a forum you got to run an executeable to register. It looks like a lot of people steal their bandwidth so it's restricted to registered users only, but you'd think there's got to be a better way to control these things.

Then again you can also get XP and level up in a Chinese forum, so maybe it's not exactly the same. I noticed it also says by downloading this you agree that you support the government of China too...

Looking at the recent spam recently, I guess it'll at least keep people from automatically registering, but that seems like overkill.

I dont want anything DL'ed to my comp, even from a bigger site that might be totally legit.

I didn't download it, since I really didn't need the stuff anyway, but I have never seen a forum that requires an executeable before. Even pretty shady stuff usually only requires an email address. Maybe they'll ask you for money on top of that too but you never needed to do anything to your computer to get in!

If they want you to pledge allegiance to the Chinese government and give you an executable to run, I assume the executable is some form of spyware.

Well the government thing is pretty standard verbage on all the Chinese sites, almost as ubiqitious as 'delete this after 24 hours for educational purposes only!', so I didn't think much about that. That said I wouldn't be surprised if it was some kind of spyware. You can't post anything anti-government or even mention stuff like democracy on a Chinese forum or they'll just delete it/ban you/report you to the government so the criteria isn't anything out of the ordinary.

Now that I think about it there are some sites that apparently will send something to your phone and you use it to register and that's the only option. Even the shadiest sites in USA will usually be satisfied if you provide them with a credit card number, which I feel safer doing since you've recourse against fraud, especially if the site you go to is at least somewhat reputable (e.g. they're big enough to have infrastructure). Obviously you shouldn't do either, but I feel credit cards are still safer.