📸 5 photos to delete

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📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: 40 million Americans are paying for things on their phone bill they never authorized. I’ll tell you how to find yours and get 90 days refunded.

Happy Sunday, {{first_name | friend}}. You know how TikTok works, you pop in for one small little scroll sesh, and suddenly, you’ve toured someone’s fridge, learned three makeup theories and watched a raccoon wash a hot dog. Time flies when the algorithm has you in a gentle chokehold. 

⏳Guess how much time the average person with TikTok spends on the app each day? A) 28 minutes, B) 60 minutes, C) 95 minutes or D) Two hours. The truth is waiting for you below.

📺 This week on my show: That innocent peace sign selfie you posted? It may be leaking your actual fingerprints. Plus a magician who trained Hollywood A-listers explains exactly how thieves are stealing Apple Watches mid-handshake. And AI systems are starting to replicate themselves. Watch this week’s episode now and don’t miss a thing. — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

The next big identity theft target isn’t your SSN. It’s your camera roll. A photo of your passport sells for $600 on the dark web. It’s the single most expensive piece of stolen ID. And it’s probably on your phone, saved just in case.

Most of us have hundreds of receipts a thief would love. But we don’t think of them as receipts.

A typical photo is more than an image. It’s a packet of data. Every shot embeds GPS coordinates, a time stamp, your device model and AI-readable details: faces, license plates, family ages, brand-name valuables, even the documents on your kitchen counter.

A photo of your kid at school drop-off contains the school’s GPS pin. A patio shot for the contractor reveals your back door, what’s inside and whether you have a security camera. A screenshot of a Venmo confirmation puts your bank handle in the camera roll.

AI scrapers on Meta, TikTok and dating apps scan every photo you share. Meta has admitted to scanning photos on your camera roll, even ones you haven’t uploaded.

Worse: AI needs only a few clear face photos to generate a video of you saying anything. Scammers have used Instagram family pictures to clone voices for grandparent scams and create synthetic IDs to open bank accounts. Your kid’s birthday album is a casting reel for fraud.

Then turn off camera roll auto-upload to apps you don’t actively use. 

In Soviet Russia, pictures take you. And now scammers in the U.S. do, too.

🗣️ TEXT/POST THIS STAT: A photo of your passport on your phone sells for $600 on the dark web. The 5 photos to delete tonight are at GetKim.com.

📩 Send this to someone who takes a ton of photos. Use those handy links below.

Your partner’s texts look clean. Instagram looks fine. No suspicious apps anywhere. But they could still be cheating and doing it right under your nose, using apps you both share every single day. I’ll tell you exactly where to look.

Listen on Komando.com →

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🇺🇸 Plane and simple, dump it all: Who was shocked by this? Before boarding Air Force One after two days in Beijing, everyone was ordered to trash everything China handed them. Burner phones. Credential badges. Lapel pins. Pens. Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and U.S. officials were photographed wearing the Chinese-issued pins during the trip. China spying? That balloon has burst.

No license? No problem! I warned you about this years ago. A CBS News investigation found that Uber, Lyft and even DoorDash accounts are being bought and rented online with no ID required. One seller’s pitch: “If you don’t have a license, no problem.” That person could be driving you home. Check the driver’s name and photo in your app before you ever get in the car. This sharing economy has too many side hustles.

Best Western data beach: Hackers broke into Best Western's reservation system last October and stayed six months completely undetected. They swiped guest names, emails, phone numbers, home addresses, and full reservation details. WorldHotels and Sure Hotels were hit, too. Over 100 countries affected. If you stayed at a Best Western in the last year, watch for calls or emails pretending to be the hotel.

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1 in 4 Americans goes crypto: More Americans own cryptocurrency than ever, 42% are women. Meanwhile, the Senate Banking Committee approved the CLARITY Act, a major stablecoin regulation bill that could make crypto behave more like real money. Things are getting very official very fast. You know crypto is mainstream when Congress actually knows what it is.

✈️ Kicked the wrong bot: Airport security cameras caught a man completely losing it at a passport scanner after it blocked him from proceeding. He kicked the machine, damaged it and was immediately arrested. The scanner didn’t budge, nor apologize, and it’ll probably outlast us all. Somehow this seems full circle: humans still having meltdowns at airport kiosks. The machine didn’t take it personally. Unfortunately for the traveler, law enforcement did. Heel of a way to handle airport security.

Your friend booked the same flight for way less money. It wasn’t luck. JetBlue is being sued for allegedly using customers’ personal data to set ticket prices. Here’s how to save money on your next flight.

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

🍏 iPhone has a few new tricks: If you haven’t installed iOS 26.5 yet, go to Settings > General > Software Update. You’ll get the usual bug fixes, plus encrypted RCS chats with Android phones, new wallpapers and Suggested Places in Maps, so searches like “grocery store” can pull up nearby trending spots. Worth the tap.

☕︎ Your laptop gets stolen at the coffee shop: The hardware? Replaceable. The 10 years of files on it? Gone with the computer bag. Carbonite keeps a complete copy safe in the cloud, so a stolen laptop is just an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. Start with 50% off today.*

📱 Secret Android shortcuts: Before opening an app and poking around, long-press its icon. Some apps pop up shortcuts instantly. Gmail lets you compose or switch accounts, Facebook can open notifications or Reels, and YouTube can take you straight to search or subscriptions. Now you can doomscroll faster.

💬 Netflix captions on your TV: While watching, press the down arrow on your remote and select Audio & Subtitles. But here's what most people miss: the default white text on a busy scene is nearly unreadable. Fix it at Netflix.com > Account > Subtitle Appearance. Bump the font size and switch to yellow text with a dark background. Those changes sync instantly to your TV. You'll be able to read them now. Easy.

This is not tech but it’s wild. Inflation has reached the “penguins are sending food back” stage.

Hakone-en Aquarium in Japan tried swapping pricey aji, or Japanese horse mackerel, for cheaper saba after operating costs jumped about 20%. The penguins weren’t charmed. Some pecked at it. Others turned away like tiny Yelp reviewers with flippers.

The staff slowly mixed the cheaper fish into meals, but the animals knew. It’s a species-wide strike. Same. Nobody wants recession sushi.

Watch it all here.

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🔜 Tomorrow: You may be paying for services you never agreed to on your phone bill. I’ll tell you where to look, what to ask your carrier and the free setting that can stop it from happening again. 

For tomorrow’s trivia: how a medieval shortcut somehow became the most overworked symbol on the internet.

⏰ The answer: C.) 95 minutes. That’s equal to a movie on TikTok every day. U.S. adults skew slightly lower at 52-60 min but still wild. Gen Z users? They’re at 152 minutes daily, more than 2.5 hours. 

TikTok beats Instagram by 33 minutes a day, YouTube by 46 and Facebook by 64.

You can thank the For You algorithm for that. It doesn’t care what you say you like. It watches what you actually do. Pause half a second on a golden retriever video? You’ll see a hundred more. That’s me right there.

I guess you could say TikTok has really mastered its tic tac tactics. (Get it? A now half Chinese-owned platform poisoning breath mints to take over the world? Tough crowd today!)

🚶🏼‍♀️ Your commute got smarter: My latest show is ready and waiting on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Fair warning: you might end up sitting in the driveway until it's over. Happens to the best of us.

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, AKASO, @ReddCinema via X

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