💸 Apple owes you $95

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Welcome to your Thursday, {{first_name | friend}}. While you were doing that noble early-morning ritual of sipping coffee and blinking at the wall like a vintage Windows screensaver, the internet was out there hustling.

⏱️ Guess what happens every 60 seconds on the internet in 2026: A) 270 million emails are sent, B) 18,000 Amazon products are ordered, C) 3.4 million YouTube videos are watched or D) All of the above? Take your best guess, your answer is hanging out at the end.

💨 Real quick. Click three links in today’s newsletter. Here’s the thing: Gmail, Yahoo and the other Big Tech inbox gatekeepers watch whether you engage. No clicks? They wonder if you want this. Three clicks say yes. You can click this one right now. Only two left. It takes seconds, and it keeps this newsletter coming your way. — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

You think you’re playing a free game. The app thinks you’re an ATM.

Bloomberg dropped a bombshell on the social casino business. We’re talking apps like Slotomania, High 5 Casino, Jackpot Party and even Monopoly GO! They look like fun mobile games. They’re actually an $11 billion industry built on a simple trick: You can buy “coins” forever, but you can never cash out.

So technically? Not gambling. Legally? A loophole the size of Vegas.

Here’s where it gets dark. 

One player begged High 5 to delete his account. He told them he was addicted, living alone and embarrassed. Their response? They credited him with a billion free coins to keep him hooked. (Yes, you read that right.) That gift kept him playing for days. Long enough for him to set up a new payment profile and start buying coins all over again.

That’s the playbook. And Apple and Google are happy to take their cut.

Real casinos in the U.S. have rules. If a customer says they’re addicted, the casino has to offer self-exclusion and put them on a banned list. State laws require it.

Social casinos? They claim none of those rules apply. No real cash payouts means no gambling regulation. So they’re free to use the same psychological enticements slot machines use. Variable rewards. Near-misses. Flashing lights. Sound effects engineered in labs to hijack your brain’s reward system.

Some players have spent over $1 million chasing the dopamine. Not winnings. Just the feeling of “almost winning.” That’s retirement money, kids’ tuition, mortgage payments. Gone.

Three things today.

If you or someone you love is struggling, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Free. Confidential. 24/7.

📩 Send this to someone who has a slot game on their phone “just for fun.”

Share this now:

(Starts at 12:30) Tokyo airports are putting humanoid robots on baggage handling and cabin cleanup duty. Finally, a worker who never loses your suitcase.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

💸 Siri owes you: Your iPhone may finally buy you lunch. Apple agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action accusing Siri of recording people without consent. If you had one of the 37 million eligible devices, like a Siri-enabled iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, HomePod or Apple TV between Sept. 17, 2014, and Dec. 31, 2024, file at the settlement website (not up yet, you’ll be notified by email) for up to $95 per device. If Apple TV recorded me yelling at remote buttons, I want more than $95 bucks. 

Fooled by fuzz: You can’t make this up. Researchers found that kids put on costume mustaches and fooled “high-tech” age verification systems at adult sites and online stores. AI scanners that cost millions to deploy. Beaten by $4 of fuzzy felt and a Little Rascals plot. This matters because lawmakers in Louisiana, Texas and a dozen other states are betting your kids’ safety on these systems. Real protection is conversation plus parental controls, not a face scanner.

Fake signature trap: Looks like scammers have discovered America’s weakest point: paperwork we don’t read. The BBB warns that fake e-signature emails, made to look like Docusign and friends, are landing in inboxes because everyone signs everything online. Job forms, tax docs, real estate, the sacred PDF buffet. The logos look legit because thieves copy them. One bad click can steal logins, empty accounts or install malware. Type the site in yourself like it’s 2006.

🤝 Hiring is a pain in the butt. Period. Between meetings and your to-do list, you don’t have time to dig through a mountain of AI-generated résumés to find one qualified human. You need a partner. LinkedIn Hiring Pro filters out the noise, so you only talk to the superstars. It’s the smartest way to hire without losing your mind. Get started by posting your job for free.*

Reddit said so: Google’s AI Overviews, the answer box at the top of search results, pulls “firsthand expert advice” from Reddit, social media and online forums. Yes, the same AI that told people to eat rocks is relaying tips from u/SwampGoblin420. A New York Times analysis found Overviews is wrong 1 in 10 times. Across trillions of Google searches a year, that’s a lot of bad advice.

🚜 I drink, therefore I yam: So a guy spotted 55 gallons of seed potatoes on Facebook Marketplace one night, enough potatoes to make fry cooks nervous, and said yes like a man possessed. He drove home with a full truck bed of taters, stared at his front yard and thought: Well, I guess I’m a farmer now. He planted every last spud. The whole yard turned into a potato farm thanks to one late-night click. That’s apeeling.

From L.A. to Alabama, authorities are passing laws to set strict limits on kids’ screen time. But will it actually work? Why “bureaucrats” might not be the answer and how the real power still belongs to you

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Stick a folded $20 bill in your phone case. I stopped carrying a wallet years ago, but every now and then, I roll up to a place that doesn’t take Apple Pay. That emergency cash has saved me more times than I can count. Tip the valet, cover the parking meter, pay the cash-only taco truck. Done. 

⚠️ Stop using the “+” trick in Gmail: Spammers and data brokers strip that “+” out in milliseconds, exposing your real email anyway. It’s a waste of time. I use StartMail because it creates true burner email aliases. They look like completely different accounts. Use one alias for every new purchase, newsletter or whatever. If you get spammed, you delete the alias. Poof! The spammer hits a dead end, and your real inbox stays pristine. It’s my strategy to cut spam by 90%. Plus, StartMail doesn’t read your email, sell you out or track you like Big Tech. Get 60% off + a 7-day free trial right now.*

Straighten out your shots: If your photos always look slightly tilted, turn on the grid and level before blaming your hands. On iPhone, open Settings > Camera and turn on Grid and Level. On Android, open the Camera app > Settings > Grid type or Composition guide. The guide lines appear automatically when you open the camera. Much better than guessing.

👥 Facebook strangers need a filter: Random friend requests are annoying, and sometimes they’re scam accounts pretending to know you. In the mobile app, go to Settings & privacy > How people find and contact you > Who can send you friend requests? and set it to Friends of friends. It won’t stop every creep, but it shuts the door on total strangers.

Your phone is the remote: Lost the Fire TV remote again? Use the Amazon Fire TV app on iPhone or Android instead. Make sure your phone and Fire TV are on the same Wi-Fi, open the app, select your Fire TV from the list and enter the four-digit code on screen. I mean, typing searches with your phone keyboard is reason enough to switch anyway.

🌐 Share internet from your PC: On Windows, you can turn your computer into a hotspot for your phone. Go to Settings > Network & internet > Mobile hotspot. Under Share my internet connection from, pick Ethernet or Wi-Fi, then choose to Share over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Toggle it on and get the password from the Mobile hotspot page.

The latest viral ChatGPT prompt asks the bot to show what it looks like, specifically as a mundane iPhone accident: overexposed, cluttered, slightly blurry and shot like the phone was dropped into a tote bag.

My ChatGPT? My oracle of wisdom and savvy life advice? Apparently a college sophomore.  

The prompt’s actually genius. Instead of asking AI to be magnificent, people are asking it to be badly photographed. The result is a pop quiz personality test. 

Here’s the prompt, try it out: 

Share this now:

🔜 Tomorrow: One cassette tape, four simple lines and a voice that became part of internet history. The man behind AOL’s “You’ve Got Mail” was heard by millions, but almost no one knew his name. I’ll tell you his story in tomorrow’s newsletter. You’re gonna love it!

For tomorrow’s trivia, why your dramatic app-closing habit might not be the battery-saving power move you think it is.

The answer: D) All of the above. Yep, in every 60-second blink of 2026, the internet is casually doing all three: about 270 million emails are sent, roughly 18,000 Amazon products are ordered, and more than 3.4 million YouTube videos are watched. 

🌎 Nearly half of those emails are spam, Amazon is feeding the shopping habits of around 230 million Prime members, and YouTube is still happily devouring everyone’s attention span one thumbnail at a time. Then again, you should always take stats from the internet with a pinch of salt.

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

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🎉 Keep it going! You got this! — Kim

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Smirly

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