💀 Hackers love your zombie accounts

I hope this Saturday is everything you’d hoped for, friend. Once upon a time, a DIY pet bowl hit the internet with one job: tweet when it was empty. Because nothing says “digital age” like your dog’s dish begging for dinner on Twitter. 

🥣 Guess the name of the gadget: Was it the: A) SmartWell, B) iBowl, C) Tweeting Bowl or D) Smart Bowl by General Mills? Find the unbowlievable answer at the end! 

I’ve started to use the app Kudos! It’s free, super smart and finds the best rewards and cash back at places like Walmart, Macy’s, AT&T, Verizon, Expedia and over 2 million stores. Add Kudos to your desktop or iPhone in two clicks. Use code KIM for $20 back. —Kim

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How many online accounts have you made over the years? 50? 100? More? That’s enough to fill a digital graveyard.

A new study shows that 25% of all online accounts are never used again, but they don’t just disappear. They sit there, wide open, with your email address and password attached. These forgotten logins are called “zombie accounts,” and hackers love them.

Why? Because most people reuse passwords or use easy-to-crack ones. And those old accounts? They’re missing security updates, have no two-factor authentication, and usually are linked to your main email address.

Here’s the scary part: Hackers use a method called credential stuffing. It’s lazy but effective. Basically, bots test your old usernames and passwords across thousands of popular sites: Gmail, Netflix, Amazon, even your bank.  

If they hit a match (and they often do), you’re toast. They can steal your identity, drain your accounts or hold your data for ransom.

What’s worse? These attacks happen 24/7, using bots that can test thousands of logins per second. One weak link, one zombie account and they’re in. 

Great, now they’re logging into your PayPal while you’re still trying to remember if it’s passwordDog! or Dogpassword! 

You can go through all your accounts one by one to kill off those you don’t use, but that’s a hassle and you won’t do it.

Think your browser’s built-in password manager will save you? Nope. It’s lame, really.

If someone gains access to your device even for a minute in person or via malware, they can unlock all your saved logins in Chrome, Safari or Edge with little effort. Worse, your browser won’t warn you if your passwords have been leaked online or on the dark web.

This convenience is a massive risk. Think of it like hiding your house keys under the doormat … and telling the whole internet.

I trust NordPass, a real password manager with zero-knowledge encryption. That means only you can access your password vault, not NordPass, not hackers, not anyone else.

It helps you:

It also helps you organize your logins, share them securely and clean up old zombie accounts fast. Yea, it’s that good.

👉 Save 52% on NordPass + get 1 EXTRA month free right now. Dang, this is a deal. Only $1.43/month for solid protection you need and can trust. 

Lock things down now before your expired mediational account triggers a zero bank balance. 

Google’s ad tech was ruled a monopoly. Now the big question is how to break it up. Plus, a listener in Texas survived a home invasion. Did he pick the right security setup? Also: drones nearly hitting planes, and an Apple Watch rescue at sea.

Listen on Komando.com →

🕳️ Divine rug pull: A Denver pastor and his wife convinced their church to invest $3.4M into a holy crypto scheme allegedly blessed by God. Spoiler: God did not 10x those returns. Now they’re facing 40 felony charges, including racketeering and securities fraud, and the coin is worth about as much as one prayer in the blockchain void.

Blue screen, black soul: Remember the Windows blue screen of death? It just went goth. The QR code? Gone. The frowny face? Dead. Instead, you get a sleek black screen and a new Wi-Fi-powered quick machine recovery feature that can resuscitate your dead PC like digital CPR.

🐓 Suspicious poultry alert: A Reddit user asked ChatGPT how to get rid of a 160-pound dead chicken. GPT tried to stay helpful (“Call animal disposal”) but couldn’t ignore the details: “Are you sure this is a chicken?” It’s the latest in a trend of viral “cursed prompts” that test AI’s limits.

Texts from the sky: T-Mobile just launched T-Satellite, a Starlink-powered service that lets you text (and alert 911) when you’re somewhere too remote for regular bars. It costs $10/month, works with over 60 phones and covers most of the U.S. You’ll need clear skies and an eSIM-enabled device. It’s not fast, but neither are rescue helicopters.

🪞 Try it on now: Google just dropped a new virtual try-on tool in Search, Shopping and Images. Upload a full-body photo, pick an outfit, and boom, you’re your own digital mannequin. Bonus: You can now set exact price alerts for that dress you’ve been stalking. Can’t wait to catfish myself in 4K.

📖 New Kindle on the block: Amazon just dropped the Kindle Colorsoft ($250). It’s $30 less than the fancier Signature Edition with wireless charging, an auto-dimming light and more storage. Perfect if you only need the basics in crisp color. Pro tip: Trade in your old Kindle and save up to 20% off.

Want real home protection without the hassle? I love this system; no wires, no contracts, and setup takes just 30 minutes. It comes with sensors, cameras and 24/7 monitoring. Snag this deal while it lasts. For a limited time, get 50% off!*

It used to take hours just to hook up a 30-kilobyte hard drive. Now, it’s done in seconds.

Listen on Komando.com →

👷 Become one. These DIY gadgets practically pay for themselves.

🏠 Upgrade your life: If you liked these, you’ll love the smart home staples waiting for you on my Amazon storefront. Just a click away.

☁️ Back it up, or risk losing it forever: Total Drive backs up your precious memories like family photos, graduation videos and all those important documents, automatically. All safe in the cloud. It’s simple, secure, and yes, I use it, too! Get 10TB for just $18.* 

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Watching a YouTube video and want to share the good part? Pause it where you want, right-click and select Copy video URL at current time. Now send the link. Easy.

Left your iPhone behind? Your Apple Watch can let you know. Press the Digital Crown > go to Find Devices > select your iPhone > tap Notifications > Notify When Left Behind, then toggle it On. 

😠 Stop Netflix trailer spoilers: They can ruin everything the second you open the app, so turn ’em off. On a web browser, click your profile picture (top right) > Manage Profiles > select your profile > Playback settings > and uncheck Autoplay previews while browsing on all devices > then hit Save. You’re welcome. 

Make text bigger on iPad: Struggling to read small print? Go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Text Size and drag the slider to the right. While you’re there, toggle on Bold Text. Bonus: In some apps, you can also open the Control Center, tap the Aa icon and adjust the text size there, too.

🛍️ Stop doomscrolling: Start deal scrolling. Amazon’s Shop By Interest tab is like TikTok for bargain hunters. Just tap Explore and pick an interest (like DIY Home Improvement). Boom, less brain rot and more “look what I got.”

$1.5 billion
What Paramount+ is coughing up for the streaming rights to South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone just pulled off the media heist of the decade: five years, $300 million a year. And yes, it’s still a cartoon about poop jokes.

245.76 TB
The size of Kioxia’s new SSD. And it fits in one device. It’s made for AI and data center workloads where raw capacity beats flashy speed. Think: massive training datasets, not movie marathons. It sacrifices performance to keep signal integrity in check, but it’s perfect if your job is “store the internet.”

700+
How many emails Mark Cuban reads and replies to every single day. No assistant. No Slack. Just three phones and an email trail stretching back to the ’90s. Meetings? Pass. He’d rather crush his inbox than lose an hour to a “quick sync.” Bonus: Gmail’s auto-replies do 20% of the heavy lifting

Volonaut just released raw, no-CGI flight footage of its Airbike. 

Get this: It’s a real, jet-turbine-powered hoverbike that sounds like a fighter jet and looks like it was stolen from a Return of the Jedi set. 

Unlike drone-style eVTOLs (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) with six rotors and training wheels, this beast uses actual turbine thrust to lift and steer. A single-seat design gives the pilot full control over throttle and direction. 

The craziest part? It hits a top speed of 124 mph. Can’t wait to get my DoorDash delivery scrambled to oblivion one day.

🚨 True stories. Real talk. Tech that actually helps. This weekend, my award-winning national show hits 420+ stations with hacks, wild listener calls and juicy stories I don’t put in the newsletter. 📻 Tune in live or grab the podcast. 

Answer: C) The Tweeting Bowl. Not a commercial gadget, but a clever DIY invention from the early 2010s, the Tweeting Bowl was a sensor-rigged pet dish that used Twitter to beg for refills. 

Yes, really. It sensed when food or water ran low and fired off tweets like “Hey, I’m empty! #hungry.”

Well, that sounds much more convenient than my dog flipping his empty bowl like a sore loser on board game night. 

Before you go, remember: Shop smart and get rewarded with Kudos. It’s free, easy to add to your iPhone or browser and helps you earn cash back. Use code KIM to get $20 back after your first purchase!

This is the #1 tech newsletter in the United States, making you smarter, not dumber. Tomorrow, a voicemail, a memory, a heartbreak waiting to happen.

Until then, go ahead, delete an app you haven’t opened in six months. 🗑️ — Kim

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT, Volonaut

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This newsletter and its content are intended for informational purposes only. They are provided without warranty of any kind. You shouldn’t construe anything provided here as legal, health, medical, technical, tax, investment, financial or any other kind of advice.

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