👀 I Zillow people, no shame

Happy Saturday, {{first_name | friend}}. 🦈 Sharks have a PR problem they don’t deserve. Your phone is statistically more dangerous. Every year, selfie injuries and deaths outnumber shark attack victims. And the gap is growing. It’s not random either. Injuries cluster so predictably that researchers pinpointed a specific type of location.

⛑️ Where do most selfie-related injuries happen globally? A) Beaches and waterfront areas, B) High-altitude spots like mountains, cliffs and tall buildings, C) Moving vehicles like cars, trains and boats or D) Crowded tourist landmarks where someone’s elbow is always in your face. Take your best guess. The answer’s at the end, and unlike a shark, it won’t bite.

📻 Listen up! My national radio show is airing all weekend across the USA. With over 510 stations strong, find your closest one by using our super-duper station locator map, listen commercial-free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart or watch the entire show on YouTube. I’m wherever you are. 

☕ Saturday morning. One minute. Think about the person in your life who opens every email. Who still doesn’t know what a VPN is. Who gets locked out of their accounts on a Tuesday. They need this newsletter. And every time they subscribe with your link, you earn a reward in “Share The Current.” Your unique referral link is at the bottom. Go look. — 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: 2.5 minutes

Confession time. I Zillow people. 🙋‍♀️

Someone mentions they bought a house in Aspen? I’m hunched over my keyboard like a Nancy Drew reboot. New potential deal on deck? I’m looking at where the guy or gal lives and how much of a mortgage they have on the house.

I know I’m not alone. Zillow pulled 221 million average monthly unique users in Q4 2025, up 8% year over year. We’re all doing it. 

Here’s what changed. AI has made Zillow stalking significantly more powerful.

Type any address into Zillow, and you get the Zestimate, their AI-calculated home value estimate built from public records, recent sales and tax data. Accurate within 2% for homes on the market. Within 7% for off-market homes.

You also get price history, what the buyers paid and when, estimated rent, tax assessments and square footage. It’s a financial X-ray.

Nobody can hide it. Zillow doesn’t let homeowners delete or suppress their sale history. That coworker who’s been vague about their upgrade? Fully searchable. You’re welcome.

Typing an address into Zillow is the old way. A pair of AI prompts is the 2026 way.

Open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Grok and start with this:

“Someone I know lives at [address]. Based on public records, what can you tell me about this person’s financial picture? What did they likely pay, what do they probably owe and what does this home say about their income bracket and financial priorities?”

That’s the baseline read on someone. Now run this second one:

“Based on the neighborhood, purchase price and home size at [address], what kind of lifestyle does this suggest? What would I likely find out about this person’s financial situation that they probably don’t advertise?”

That second prompt is the one that makes you feel like you work for the FBI. AI is remarkably good at connecting dots you didn’t know existed.

I tested this on someone I was about to do a deal with. The second prompt told me they’d bought at the peak of the market in 2024, were likely underwater and had refinanced twice. None of that came up in our conversation. All of it changed how I negotiated.

📩 Send this to someone who met a new business contact, has a neighbor they’ve been dying to look up or simply can’t stop hitting refresh on Zillow at midnight. You know exactly who.

Share this now:

‼️ Check your router: U.S. officials say Russia’s GRU (their military intelligence unit) hacked thousands of cheap home and small-business routers we all ignore, then used them to steal credentials and watch or even redirect network traffic. Here’s what to do. Open your favorite AI chatbot and paste this: “I need to secure my home router right now. My router brand is [TP-Link / Netgear / Asus / Xfinity / whatever yours is]. Walk me through exactly how to: log into my router admin panel, check for and install any firmware updates, change the default admin password to something strong and turn off remote management. Give me step-by-step instructions specific to my router brand, written simply so anyone can follow them. Flag anything that looks suspicious if I describe what I see on screen.” Swap in your router brand and go. If you don’t know your brand, flip the router over, it’s on the sticker.

Android snitch settlement: Oh, the audacity. There’s a class action basically saying that Android phones sent data to Google over cellular networks without permission. Google’s got to pay a $135 million settlement in federal court. If you used an Android in the U.S. on cellular from Nov. 12, 2017, through final approval (expected late June 2026) and are not part of a separate California lawsuit, you may get paid up to $100. Choose your payment method by May 29. Go here.

😵‍💫 Your phone is aging your brain: Putting it bluntly, a new study says cutting your mobile internet for two weeks can improve your attention span as much as if you’d gotten 10 years younger. Researchers (paywall link) tracked 467 people, and the results weren’t subtle. Better focus. Sharper thinking. Just from stepping back from the scroll. Your current digital wellness plan of flipping the phone face down on the table? Probably not cutting it.

🦵 Stiff knees, thinning hair and new wrinkles are your collagen crashing: Expensive creams cannot fix that. I put NativePath in my morning tea every single day. Dissolves instantly. Zero taste. Rebuilds from the inside out. Get up to 45% off plus free shipping and free gifts.**

Forced retirement: I have a soft spot for old gadgets that keep doing their one little job, which is why this Amazon move annoys me. Starting May 20, older Kindles (2012 and earlier) lose Kindle Store access, borrowed books and Libby library loans. Downloaded books stay, for now. Reset or deregister that thing, and congratulations, you own a beige electronic place mat. Amazon is sweetening the pill with upgrade trade-in discounts and ebook credits. The screen still works fine, but the software just decided it won’t. 

🐱 Claws for concern: Nothing makes expensive tech look dumber than needing a cat as the backup safety system. A guy’s NVIDIA RTX 4090 reportedly melted down overnight, and his cat kept waking him until he got up and found the PC on fire. The 4090’s 16-pin connector has been under scrutiny for melting if it’s stressed, loose or bent too tightly near the plug. Moral of the story: Inspect your cable, avoid sharp bends and give your cat wet food more often. Speaking of, what’s the difference between a cat and a comma? A cat has claws at the end of paws and a comma is a pause at the end of a clause.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: TV “sharpness” is a scam setting. Cranking it up does not add detail. It throws a weird outline around everything until the picture looks crispy in the worst possible way. Real clarity comes from the TV’s resolution and the quality of what you are watching. So keep sharpness low, around 0 to 15 max, unless you enjoy your movies looking preseasoned.

☁️ iCloud and Google Drive are not backups. I know that’s not what you want to hear. They sync your files, but if you accidentally delete something or your hard drive fails, that deletion syncs everywhere, too. Gone. Carbonite actually backs up your entire computer automatically. Set it and forget it. Get 50% off today.*

Your phone is charging slow because of the cable, not the charger: Most people use a USB-A to USB-C cable that maxes out at 12 watts. Their phone supports 45, 65, even 100 watts. Swap in a USB-C to USB-C cable rated for fast charging. Same brick, suddenly topped up in 30 minutes. The cable was the bottleneck the whole time.

📸 That long-press on your camera shutter does more than record: On iPhone, hold the shutter and slide your finger up or down to zoom while filming. Now you can frame the shot properly. Android works slightly differently. Long-press, slide up to lock recording, then tap 2x, 4x or 10x zoom. Both work perfectly for one-handed filming. Try it once. You’ll use it constantly.

CarPlay has Siri for a reason: Long-press the Home button on CarPlay and say “Open Podcasts” to pull up the app without touching the screen. Ask “What’s in my calendar today?” on the way to work, or try “What’s the weather in Phoenix?” and it will read it out loud. Much safer than trying to scroll through menus at a red light for one specific song.

📲 The file sharing app that works on everything: It’s called LocalSend. Free, no account or login needed. Unlike AirDrop and Quick Share, it’s fully cross-platform, so you can send anything between Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone interchangeably. Even cooler? The app doesn’t use the cloud, meaning it’s faster, private and works without the internet. Install on both devices and start sharing. Brilliant, like you.

👂 Listen up! Tune into my award-winning radio show, airing this weekend on 510+ stations. You can also listen commercial-free on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts. Search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

Love the show? Tell your local station! Hit their Contact Us page or send a social media shout-out. Your 30 seconds keeps the tech talk coming to your city. Thank you!

🤖 Secret CIA tool: The CIA found a missing U.S. airman hiding out in the Iranian desert. How? By listening to his heartbeat 40 miles away with a never-before-used device: “The Ghost Murmur.” Hear the story.

Don’t just listen! Check out the show on my YouTube channel. You get to see all the stories and calls. So cool. 

👇 Use the links below to listen on your schedule.

One stolen bike changes you. You become a person who triple-locks everything and still looks back twice. 

Velotric’s new e-bike gets it. Built-in Apple Find My means if someone walks off with it, you track it from your iPhone like a runaway AirPod. It also logs rides into Apple Health, toggles between Class 1 and 3 speeds and switches sensing modes, depending how seriously you’re pretending the ride counts as cardio. 

Runs $1,999. Steep, yes. My bike keeps getting stolen at the same time and place, day after day. It's a vicious cycle. (OK, I tried so you can at least groan and shake your head a little bit.)

🔜 Tomorrow: Five stories in tomorrow’s Current will make you say “wait, what?” at least twice. A hiring trick that exposed a North Korean spy. A $15,000 text message. And the sleep hack you’ve been doing completely wrong. That and more in your in-box tomorrow.

The answer is B) High-altitude locations. I know a couple who honeymooned in Mexico. He was photographing the scenery. She was taking selfies, stepped back and fell 150 feet. She didn’t survive.

Height makes a photo look more dramatic, so people move closer to edges, climb barriers and position themselves in genuinely dangerous spots to get the shot. The more dramatic the backdrop, the more likely someone is to ignore railings, common sense and gravity’s very consistent terms of service.

🎯 No joke. Every expert was once somebody who just decided to pay attention. — 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.

Your referrals get you great rewards!

Send your unique link below to friends and family.

👉 Your link is: {{ rp_refer_url }}

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!)

Your referral count is: {{ rp_num_referrals }}

You’re {{ rp_num_referrals_until_next_milestone }} referrals away from {{ rp_next_milestone_name }}.

🎉 Keep it going! You got this! — Kim

Photo credit(s): Gemini, Amazon, Velotric

Companies and products denoted by an asterisk (*) within this publication are paid sponsors or advertisements. As an Amazon Associate, the publisher earns from qualifying purchases. Statements regarding products denoted by a double asterisk (**) have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration; such products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This newsletter is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice of any kind. Readers should consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on this content. The publisher disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, or injury resulting from the use of or reliance on the information contained herein.