Mining Permit Scam
On the contrary of some organizations or groups’ beliefs, that often say that they are the self-proclaimed police of Highsec, no single group or organization can hold sovereignty over all or any parts of Highsec space.
One organization does come to mind, as I’m sure you’re also aware, but for the sake of this “article” it shall remain unnamed and it does not matter to the point I’m trying to make here.
So this sort of scam arose with the significantly increased activity in suicide ganking across highsec, where an organization (almost like a religious sect) demand compensation for activities players do, in this case we’re talking about mining, or they would be destroyed. Even if you chose to pay the “fee” there would be no guaranties that another from the organization couldn’t just come do the exact same thing a week, a day or moments later. Of course, having already pay for the “permit”, you’d probably not want to pay an additional fee, and refusing (regardless of reasons) could lead to you demise.
So what could/can you do to avoid these situations?
Use a “proper” ship that would make it require much more effort to achieve their goal, the destruction of your ship, so rather than using a ship with a paper thin tank it would probably be worth your while to fly a ship with much more tank but only slightly reduce your overall performance in the field (asteroid belt)