Does anyone have any thoughts on the safety / privacy considerations of becoming a VIP member via CC Bill? Is this 'risky'?
Its only risky if someone else monitors what you spend money for on your CC!
Regardless of the theme of TER, there is no law against being a member and while LE MIGHT use TER to mine data for stings, its pretty unlikely really and you have to do a lot more than surf the www site to get busted for something.
MVR
Get a prepaid card at your local drug store. Use cash if you're really paranoid, but I think you can safely buy a $25 card along with some other stuff.
Many of us share your concern regarding privacy/discretion.
As of 9 months ago, the charge on my card statement appeared as "CC Bill" and lists a toll-free number for CC Bill. It does not list TER. I don't know what info you could get if you called CC Bill and asked about the charge.
One other site that I used CC Bill on was listed on the card statement. Hopefully this does not start to occur with TER. It would be nice to hear from Staff about this issue.
With respect to the use of prepaid credit cards such as GreenDot, things appear to be hit or miss. I've seen one or two reports of them working with CC Bill. But in general they appear not to work.
I agree with a previous hobbiest. Get a card as close to the amount you need, go online to register it under an alias with an incorrect address, and pay for your TER VIP with it. By the way, pay for the Debit card with cash!!! Absolutely no paper trail.
Slightly OT, but about 15 minutes after I signed up here for a VIP account thru CCbill, I received a call from my CC company asking me to verify the charge. Apparently sites using CCbill are popular with those using stolen CC numbers.