swa66 - 6:51 pm on Feb 9, 2013 (gmt 0)

spend the rest of my online years biting my nails all the time

Did you read their terms and Conditions ?
As long as you do not violate them you should have nothing to worry about. There are millions of us who use it and have not been banned.
Do not let the few that did get banned scare you away. Yes they are vocal, and yes they claim to have done nothing wrong. It's their best way to get back at Google: say they did nothing wrong and point it all at the large company.

And even if they cut you off, you still can go back to other networks... you have nothing to lose (well technically any income you might have accrued would be forfeited in the even of a closure of an account).

DFP: it's not going to handle payments AFAIK, so again there: it's just a technical means of tracking & deciding what's shown to what visitor. While it's overly complex and next to impossible to comprehend it's not DFP that's paying you is it ?

Lose the paranoia unless your site(s) would violate the T&C.