One radio advertisement I heard over and over again during the holidays was for International Star Registry, a company that offers the ability to “name a star after someone” for a low fee of $54.00. In addition to having the star’s new name “registered at the US Copyright office,” you get a certificate. For $54, all you get is a certificate, some star charts, and a map of your star circled in red. Pay a little more and you get a nicer frame. You can also get various charms and bracelets with your star’s official name and your name too.

It’s cute but the name isn’t official… check the fine print at the bottom of the page: “International Star Registry star naming is not recognized by the scientific community. Your stars name is reserved in International Star Registry records only.” It might be worth $54 to be able to name a star a particular name, so that every time someone mentioned it in the news you’d get a little shout out (”Look, John Smith is going supernova!”), but to have it only written down in some company’s book? C’mon.

$54 (plus shipping and handling) would be so much better spent on something else. Heck, despite my aversion to gift cards, I’d prefer a gift card to anywhere over a star named after me!

I must have heard this commercial two or three dozen times the week or two before Christmas and these guys have been in business forever, makes me wonder…

(in all fairness to people who did buy this and happen to read this, you do get a nice frame and it is a cool idea, but you aren’t getting a star officially named after you!)

(Photo derived from vorty)

The human brain is notoriously good at sniffing out fraud, but every so often something comes along that, for whatever the reason, sneaks by our fraud detector and makes us do something we will later regret. That’s why you should do what NASA scientists to… build in redundancy for your fraud detector by getting another fraud detector: your friends. If something sounds too good to be true and you haven’t smelled fraud, get your friend to take a whiff and let you know what he or she thinks. If they think it’s okay, get a third, fourth, or even fifth opinion. If you have an especially cynical friend or one who is a domain expert (or more of an expert than you), make sure you get his or her opinion as one of the first five. If everyone says thumbs up, then go for it!

Let me give you a real life example of this situation. Back in college one of my friends was dreaming up schemes to make millions of dollars and fell upon a scheme where you could buy twelve XBoxes gaming systems off a seller on eBay and then flip them on the local school message boards for a handsome profit. He had convinced two of our friends to go in on the deal and was searching for a fourth when he asked me. I listened to his plan and everything sounded fine until he told me that the source of his XBoxes gaming systems off eBay and that he was getting a great deal. Immediately my fraud detector went off. It’s not suspicious to find a great deal on eBay, it’s suspicious to find a great deal on twelve $200 gaming systems. I told him that the auction sounded fraudulent and that I didn’t want to become involved financially but I’d do what I could to give them advice on how to protect themselves in case there was a problem. Well, eventually the whole scheme broke down as the three of them came to their senses but I was the fourth opinion (counting his own as one) and the first that sounded off the fraud alarm. Had the deal gone through with only three people (say, if the auction was for six XBoxes instead of twelve), it would’ve gone through and perhaps someone would’ve been defrauded (or not, there are plenty of legitimate bulk auctions on eBay).

There’s a reason why Ponzi schemes and the Nigerian scams are still alive and well today, they work well enough that the folks running them still turn a profit. Ponzi schemes are now called HYIP or High Yield Investment Plans (oh, 23049823094% return in one day? Sure!) and Nigerians are still getting people to cash fake million dollar checks and sending back legitimate ten thousand dollar checks. So, the next time you think something is way too good to be true, request all the way to a fifth opinion. If it ends up being a scam, you can at least rest with the psychological benefit of knowing four of your friends would’ve been duped too.

(Incidentally, some folks are turning the tables on the scammers in a hilarious way)