👀 Google has a file on you

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Happy Monday, {{first_name | friend}}. You know that room. The one where your Wi-Fi goes full ghost mode the second you cross the threshold. One bar. Frozen faces. The spinning wheel of buffering doom. You’ve blamed the router, the walls, the internet provider, Mercury in retrograde.

🏠 Here’s the thing. It’s not random. It’s almost always the same room in almost every home, no matter where the router lives or how the house is built. And the reason has nothing to do with distance. 

Which room destroys your Wi-Fi signal? A) The basement, B) The bathroom, C) The garage or D) The kitchen? Take your best shot. Bonus points if you can nail the reason. The answer’s waiting at the end, and I promise it’ll change how you think about this room forever. 

🙏🏻 Quick favor before we dive in. Email providers like Gmail and Yahoo are basically bouncers. They watch whether you click links in my emails. Click them and I stay in your inbox. Don’t and I get tossed into spam like a gas station sushi roll. So tap any link today. Even this one. It sends one signal: “I want this.” That’s all. Now let’s get you some tech smarts! — Kim

📬 Someone forwarded this to you? Smart friend. Want it in your own inbox instead of waiting on them? Sign up here. It’s free, and I promise not to spam you.

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

Here’s something I want you to do before you read another word.

Open a new tab. Go to myadcenter.google.com. Sign in if it asks.

Look at what’s there. If the page looks empty or says personalized ads are off, don’t close the tab. That means Google stopped showing you the file. It didn’t stop building it.

Google lists the topics it thinks you care about, the brands it thinks you buy, your age, gender and parental status. Built from your searches, YouTube history, Maps locations and every website running a Google ad. Which is most of the internet.

The reaction is almost always the same. How does it know that? How do I make it stop?

In My Ad Center, you’ll see categories like Home Improvement, Health Conditions, Financial Planning, Baby and Toddler. Onetime searches. Old research. That 2 a.m. rabbit hole from three years ago. Google kept all of it.

Delete individual interests with the minus button. But that’s trimming edges. Here’s what actually matters.

Go to myaccount.google.com, click Data & Privacy, then Web & App Activity. Master switch. Search history, Chrome browsing, Maps queries, Play Store activity, all of it. Turn it off. Set auto-delete to three months, so data doesn’t live there forever.

While you’re there, turn off Location History. Google has a timeline of everywhere you’ve been. Every restaurant. Every doctor’s office. Every address you’ve driven to. Gone.

If you use Gemini, it’s been building a memory of your conversations since late 2025. On by default. Tap your profile, open Gemini Apps Activity, turn off Keep Activity. Delete what’s already there.

Use Temporary Chat for anything sensitive. Look for the icon next to New Chat in Gemini. Conversations get wiped after 72 hours and never used for training. Use it whenever you’d be embarrassed to see it on a billboard.

📩 Send this to someone who uses Google every single day and has never once looked at what it’s collected. So, everyone you know. Use the icons below.

Hot new job? Teaching your replacement. Companies are handing out fat paychecks to people who teach robots how to do their work. I also cover the viral Anthropic chart showing which jobs AI is coming for first. Here’s what the findings mean for your career. Plus, ChatGPT’s X-rated mode, a Google Maps upgrade and a man who used ChatGPT to save his dog’s life.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

🎮 Level up. get paid: The FAA is launching a campaign this week recruiting video gamers as air traffic controllers, saying quick thinking, focus under pressure, and managing complex situations are exactly the skills they need. Starting pay is $22 an hour in training, and top controllers earn up to $177,000 their first year. The application window opens midnight April 17 and closes at 8,000 applicants or April 27. Learn more here.

Bot our problem: I love that we invented a machine to answer shopping questions and gave it the confidence of a drunk cousin at Thanksgiving. Target reportedly told shoppers that if its AI assistant says a product works with your device and it absolutely doesn’t, that’s on you. This came up after a customer relied on the bot’s advice and got burned. Ouch. Before you buy anything AI recommends, verify the product specs yourself.

⚠️ Scammers caught in $17 million house stealing scheme: Federal agents in California helped carry out Operation Hard Money, busting a massive scheme in which scammers used stolen identities to hijack property titles and siphon off $17.4 million in real estate loans. The victims were people over age 70 who owned their homes outright. It’s a wake-up call that your home’s deed is a prime target for high-tech fraud rings. I use Home Title Lock. It alerts me the second anyone tampers with my title. Get a free trial and free Title History Report right now.*

📡 Faster Starlink's coming If you're one of the 10 million Starlink customers, especially if it's your only internet option, pay attention. The FCC is voting April 30 on a rule change that could boost Starlink's capacity by up to 700% using the exact same number of satellites already in orbit. The current rules are from the 1990s. Yes, really. Faster speeds, lower costs, or both could follow. Rural and remote customers stand to benefit most. Nothing's final until the vote. But this one's worth watching.

🍊 Apple’s cheapest laptop is now $599: Apple launched the MacBook Neo in March and it's reshaping the entry-level laptop market. It's the first Mac powered by an iPhone chip. Silent, colorful, fanless, and 16 hours of battery life. The ASUS CFO called it a “shock” to the PC industry. Teachers are ordering them for classrooms. Students who could never afford a Mac are buying one. For anyone who has been using a Windows laptop because an Apple was out of reach, the math just changed considerably. Here’s a link to it on Amazon. It’s a game changer.

A downed airman. An Iranian desert. A classified CIA extraction technique called "Ghost Murmur" that has never been used in the field. Until now. I have the story.

Plus, a toddler got bitten by a wolf at the zoo while his parents were on their phones. A man who has held Dodgers season tickets for 50 years was turned away at the gate because he doesn't own a smartphone. And why adult film stars are now replacing themselves with AI. (Yes, really.)

Then, meet Chrichelle Brown. She's legally blind. She put on a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses and heard her world described back to her for the first time. This one will stop you cold.

👉 Watch right now on YouTube. You’ll be so glad you did!

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Windows shortcuts can save you clicks. Snap any window to the left or right with Win + Arrow Keys. Open the widget panel for weather, stocks and sports with Win + W. Need notifications or your calendar fast? Win + N. You can also open your full clipboard history and paste something you copied earlier with Win + V. Learn them once. Use them forever.

Your Android’s not running at full speed: Most phones don’t use their highest refresh rate out of the box. Open Settings > Display > Motion smoothness and bump it up from 60Hz to whatever your max is. Scrolling instantly feels smoother and more responsive. Got an Auto or Adaptive option? Turn that on instead. Saves battery, too.

💻 Mac’s weird bug: Leave it on for more than 49 days without restarting, and it’ll get kicked offline. Diabolical if you keep it on that long anyway, but apparently, macOS gets confused, stops clearing out old network connections, then cannot make new ones. Cue websites, apps and servers all going sideways. The fix is easy: Reboot your Mac before it gets there. Once a week is a smart move.

Alexa can handle your shopping list: Say, “Alexa, reorder paper towels,” and they’re in your cart. Ask, “Alexa, where’s my stuff?” for delivery updates. You can also try “Alexa, what’s the most popular smart light?” when you’re unsure what to buy. Don’t have one? A cheap Echo Dot is worth it. Makes a great gift, too.

🚗 Skip the dealer’s $150 diagnostic fee: When your “Check engine light” comes on, don’t panic and don’t pay. Drive to an AutoZone, O’Reilly or Advance Auto Parts and ask them to run a free OBD-II scan. They’ll plug a reader into the port under your dashboard (usually below the steering wheel, left side) and hand you a printed sheet with the exact trouble code in two minutes. Then ask your AI chatbot what the code means before you talk to anyone trying to charge you money. Knowing the code going in is the difference between a $40 fix and a $400 one. Don’t let them exhaust your savings on a simple fix!

Ever wish LinkedIn had profile pics for people from past millennia? I don’t, but science just obliged.

Researchers used DNA from three Egyptian mummies to reconstruct their faces at age 25, pulling genetic clues for skin tone, eye color and bone structure from remains dating back to 1380 B.C.E. 

The results are startlingly specific. Real faces. Real people. 

Only 3,400 years late to their own reveal. It’s CSI meets time travel. Cool? Absolutely. But also a reminder that no matter how long ago you lived, science will eventually put your face on the internet without asking.

🔜 Tomorrow: Your phone isn’t dying, your laptop isn’t doomed and your Wi-Fi isn’t cursed. I’m sharing five easy fixes for the everyday tech problems driving you insane before you waste money replacing perfectly salvageable devices. Get that in your inbox tomorrow.

The answer: B) The bathroom. It’s a perfect storm. Ceramic tiles contain metallic compounds that scatter signals. Metal pipes absorb radio waves. Water disrupts transmission. Mirrors reflect signals back on themselves. Signal strength can drop more than 50% even with the router right outside the door.

The fix is a Wi-Fi extender or mesh node near the bathroom. Or stop trying to stream Netflix from the tub. I guess you could say your signal really goes down the drain in there. (I’ll see myself out.)

🚽 A bit of potty humor: If you're American when you go in the bathroom and American when you come out, what are you in the bathroom? European!

✅ Mother's Day is almost here. If you want a gift she'll actually use, Raycon Everyday Earbuds Classic is my pick. I wear mine every single day. Active Noise Cancellation, multipoint connectivity, and a 10-minute charge gives 90 minutes of playtime. The Cool Mint color is gorgeous. My readers get 15% off. Shop Raycon now and save 15%!

🎉 Somewhere today there’s a kid on a swing pumping their legs as hard as they can to see how high they can go. Be that kid today. — Kim

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

🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.

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They get tech-smart. You get prizes. Win-win. The more referrals, the more prizes. (Yes, even a meet and greet with me. I’d love that!)

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🎉 Keep it going! You got this! — Kim

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT, Iseyyox, Parabon NanoLabs

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