Seasons Greetings!
I see the star name scammers are in full force again. Internation Star Registry is still spending money on legitimate sounding radio ads promoting their scam. This means millions of people are falling for it. Hopefully more posts like this one will help to clue in those suckers.
I was reviewing my spam/scam queue and noticed a star naming scam from International Star Council. These guys appear to be new having just registered their domain names in 2003. From what I can tell is that they are trying to ramp up their ill-gotten profits via e-mail and guestbook spam. It looks like they are based on Los Angeles. If anyone feels the urge to provide feedback to them, here is the contact info:
Media Group, Hydra info@hydragroup.com
Hydra Media Group, Inc.
8581 Santa Monica Blvd #707
Los Angeles, CA 90069
US
310-861-8788
310-388-5284
Have fun, be safe and think smart.
I just encountered a case of false advertising in an eBay auction I won. I attempted to submit a fraud report to eBay and discovered that eBay will not accept fraud complaints until 30 days after the close of the auction. This is pretty ridiculous. I wonder how many more people the seller can defraud during those 30 days? I can understand not accepting complaints after a certain amount of time has passed, but not accepting complaints as soon as possible is just plain reckless on eBay's part.
"International Star Registry" (ISR) is at it again, swamping our local radio stations with their "Name a star after someone" advertisements. They carefully tell you that your star name with be printed in a copyrighted book. But they fail to mention that their star "names" are not in any way official.
Wired News published an excellent article about ISR in December 2001 appropriately titled "Buy a Star, But It's Not Yours".
An example of what you will actually receive if you send money to ISR.
More (older) articles about ISR and other "star naming services":
http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/02/12/26824631.shtml
http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/~gibson/starnames/globe.html
http://www.earthsky.com/Features/News/star.html
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_385.html
http://astrwww.astr.cwru.edu/Personal/martin/nameastar.html