🚰 Hackers came for your tap water

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🎉 Hollywood, I’m coming for you. Starting this Saturday, noon to 3 p.m., you can catch my show on KEIB AM 1150, our brand-new Los Angeles affiliate. And this station is a monster. It reaches from Ventura County through LA, down past Orange County and inland, too. Details here. If you’re in SoCal, tune in and tell a friend. Traffic on the 405 just got a whole lot smarter.

Welcome to your Thursday, {{first_name | friend}}. Some people have a mantra. Mine might be “Siri, STOP!” while my phone ignores me. Jeff Bezos has one, too, though his shows up in Amazon shareholder letters like a mic drop moment. 

It’s short. It’s famous. It helped turn “maybe we can sell books online” into a retail empire expanding into space, and beyond. 

🙊 What’s Bezos’ go-to phrase? A) “Think Big,” B) “Always Day 1,” C) “Move Fast” or D) “Be Frugal”? Keep reading, the answer is waiting at the finish line in a box. 

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Don’t let scammers use your family history against you. If your tree is online, your kids and parents are at risk. Really. Incogni is the cleanup crew for your family’s digital footprint. It only takes a few clicks. Protect your circle for 60% off with my code: KIM60.* — Kim

🤯 WOW! Hackers hit more than 30 Minnesota water systems over two days. In one small town, the controls running the well and treatment plant shut off. After an attack in 2023, EPA inspections found over 70% of water utilities flunked basic security requirements.

The Short Version: Your tap is safe today. Stash 1 gallon per person per day, sign up for your city’s emergency alerts and learn the boil drill. Steps below.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

Ashley, I’ve got you. First, what happened. 

From Sunday, July 26, to Monday, July 27, a coordinated attack hit more than 30 Minnesota community water systems. Plymouth, South St. Paul and Maple Plain got hit. In little Braham, the well and treatment plant computers went dark at 9:34 a.m. Monday. 

The town leaned on its water tower, and crews had everything back operational inside two hours. The state health department says nobody had to change how they used their tap water, thankfully.

Water plants run on SCADA systems. Translation: the remote controls for pumps and treatment chemicals. If state-sponsored foreign or other hackers kill the pumps and nobody notices, pressure drops. Low pressure lets groundwater, and whatever’s swimming in it, seep in through cracks and leaks. That’s why a busted water main triggers an urgent boil-water notice. 

The darker scenario? Someone fiddling with the chemical dosing.

This isn’t hypothetical. In 2023, an Iranian-linked group hijacked a Pennsylvania water station’s controls. Operators ran it by hand until cleanup. And EPA inspections found over 70% of water systems nationwide violated basic security rules. Yikes.

Minnesota flipped on its statewide cyber response, and everyone from town halls to Washington shut this down in hours. The state’s cyber chief said the defenses “worked as intended.” I loved hearing that.

Hackers keep hacking. Make sure your plan holds water.

🎯 Send this to someone who thinks their emergency kit is a flashlight and vibes.

📱 Text-worthy: Hackers hit 30+ Minnesota water systems in TWO days. One town’s treatment plant controls shut off. State cyber teams stopped the attack fast, but the EPA says over 70% of inspected water utilities flunk basic security. Kim says: Stash 1 gallon of water per person per day, starting now.

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(Starts at 7:43) Nearly half of Americans use TikTok to search instead of Google. Funny thing is, most say Google feels more trustworthy. We break down why.

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

🛫 Plane exhausting: Qantas wants you airborne for nearly a full day and would like this presented as desirable. Its planned Sydney-to-London nonstop (paywall link) could take 22 hours but save up to four hours by eliminating connections. I get the convenience. Rip the bandage off instead of loitering in the JFK terminal for a chunk of the day. To make the trip tolerable, the custom Airbus carries 238 passengers, fewer than usual, and offers room to stretch, plus carefully timed lights and meals. Still, 22 hours in coach isn’t a flight. It’s a lease.

50 shades of AI: Imagine a romance writer working for 27 years to climb up the charts with 117 novels, only to watch your sales plummet because AI books are flooding Amazon. That’s what’s happening to Jess Michaels. It’s a major publishing world problem (paywall link). Jess is considering quitting because chatbot books are coming out faster than she can proofread a chapter. Researchers sampled 970 self-published novels. More than 90% were AI-written. Nothing stirs the heart like a cowboy whose eye color changes twice during breakfast.

🕶️ Hakuna ma-data: You know how ordinary-looking glasses with built-in cameras can turn a grocery store conversation into entertainment for 23 million strangers? The internet’s answer is playing Disney music to trip copyright filters. So if a stranger in sunglasses is secretly filming you, the thing to do is play “Let It Go.” I hate that the burden lands on the person being filmed. Add to that having to make the world’s worst decision: being filmed non-consensually or playing Disney music as defense. 

Banking on chaos: Elon Musk would like you to keep your cash where strangers bicker about politics under photos of cats. X Money launched for Premium and Premium Plus subscribers, offering free transfers, Apple Wallet support and up to 6% APY. Basically Venmo attached to the internet’s loudest argument. The wait, what detail? A metal Visa card printed with your X username. Nothing like closing the check at a nice dinner with BeerDad1974 on your card. 

🧻 A royal flush: I read this and immediately wondered whether my bathroom needs a privacy policy. Hamberger Medical’s sensor-equipped toilet seat records a six-lead EKG while you sit for 30 seconds, then checks for AFib through a phone app. More than 5 million U.S. adults have AFib, and about one-third feel no symptoms. A stroke can be the first warning. Useful? Absolutely. Creepy? Kinda. I’m glad no cameras are involved, yet. 

UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid spent his career detecting AI fakes. Now he can’t tell what’s real. Other experts are getting fooled, too. What that means for the rest of us.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Before heading out for dinner, see whether half the city had the same idea. Search the restaurant or store in Google Maps, open its Overview and swipe down to Hours. You’ll see how busy it is right now and whether there’s a wait. Planning ahead? Popular times also lets you compare days and hours.

🔒 Fluffy123 is not a password: It’s a doggy door for hackers. They don’t guess anymore, they run software that tears through millions of password combinations in seconds, and your clever variation is already in the pile. NordPass generates a long, unique, uncrackable password for each account, locks them in an encrypted vault and fills them in automatically on your phone and laptop. No sticky notes. No forgot-your-password emails. Get 55% off today.* 

Facebook took that search seriously: Look up one sofa, and suddenly Marketplace thinks you’re furnishing an entire house. To clean up the recommendations, open the mobile app, Settings and privacy > Activity log > Logged information > Manage search. Delete the random searches you no longer want influencing your feed. 

📱 Make apps disappear: Don’t want someone spotting your banking or dating apps when they “borrow” your Android? From the Home screen, tap Settings at the top right > Hide apps on Home and Apps screens. Choose what you want hidden and tap Done. They’re not deleted, either. Search the app’s name whenever you need it.

ChatGPT isn’t a mind reader: Better answers start with telling it who it’s talking to. Go to Settings > Personalization > About you. Add your job, DIY experience, favorite movies, music, hobbies and any values that matter to you. It’ll remember those details in future chats.

🌗 Mac wallpapers but better: Apple’s defaults get old after a while. Umbra is a free app with a huge Unsplash library of nature, travel, patterns, you name it. Here’s the fun part: Pick one wallpaper for Light Mode and another for Dark Mode, and Umbra swaps them automatically whenever your Mac changes appearance.

You had one job: Show off military AI. Instead, one of the pictures gave the internet a field day. 

Then everyone noticed the prompt, “I NEED JHELP BUILDING AN AGENT TO CREATE A WAR,” an officer’s full name and a file labeled WAR FOLDER.docx. There’s so much wrong here I don’t even know where to start.

The post is still up, too. You gotta see this one.

🎓 What you learned today: Water systems are cyber targets, 22 hours in the air is the new red-eye flight, AI-written romance novels are crowding out actual humans with feelings, your bathroom may double as a heart monitor, and a military AI demo gave the internet a very disturbing peek behind the curtain. Not bad for one email. Tomorrow, scammers are using fake Wi-Fi networks to trick travelers into handing over logins. I’ll explain how to spot the scam before your Gmail becomes carry-on luggage.

📆 The answer: B) “Always Day 1.” Even if it’s Day 1,045. Jeff Bezos swears it’s a mindset: Stay sharp, stay curious, stay hungry. Whether you’re running a Fortune 500 or finally launching that side hustle, act like it’s the first day of your big break, full of energy and possibility. 

So next time you hit snooze, whisper to yourself, “Always Day 1.” Then hit snooze again like the rest of us. 

Speaking of, how many motivational speakers does it take to change a light bulb? Zero, because the change starts with you. (I saw that smirk, my job is done!)

👤 Your data isn’t just “out there.” It’s being used to build a secret shadow score that determines what you pay for insurance, whether you see available rentals online and even how long you wait for customer service. All the data about you is sorted and sold every single day to who knows who. Here’s how I took control back. You can, too! Get 60% off right now.*

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, SVHT, @DoWCTO via X

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