⚠️ Sold for $12

Welcome to the first Saturday in May, {{first_name | friend}}. Speaking of firsts, somewhere between the launch of the first iPhone and our collective decision to stop proofreading anything, we handed autocorrect way too much power. And it has been humiliating us ever since.

🤯 I’m talking real, documented disasters. Realtors selling houses with “stainless steel applesauces.” HR welcoming new hires to “the tea.” I wanted to text a priest that I was “stuck in a meeting,” but my phone decided to tell him I was “stuck in a mating.” Awkward.

So place your bets. Guess how much autocorrect costs American businesses in miscommunications a year? A) $500 million, B) $1.2 billion, C) $3.5 billion or D) Whatever it costs to explain to your boss why you called him a duck. Take your best gas, the answer’s at the end! 

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⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

“There’s no way criminals are selling my passwords online.”

That’s what a family member told me the other day. He was wrong. I know because we found his passwords together. Cost me $12 and about four minutes.

He asked me not to use his name. But he was floored and suggested that I share everything we found.

The dark web marketplace looks like Amazon. Search bar. Filters. Customer reviews. Bulk discounts. “Fresh data” listed like produce at a farmers market.

I had him search his own email address. You should have seen his face at what popped up.

His Gmail password from 2019. A Yahoo account he’d completely forgotten. Three shopping sites he used once. Home address. All listed. Plus birth year, phone number and SSN thrown in as a bonus.

The worst part? Most of the 17 different passwords were current. He was still using them.

That 2019 Gmail password had been sold 847 times, according to the listing. That’s at least $1,694 in criminal profit. From one reused password. One.

His data and account logins mostly came from data breaches he’d never heard of and a bunch of forgotten accounts. A flower delivery service from 2018. An app that quietly went out of business. More apps he didn’t even know he still had. A forum he joined, then never went back.

Hackers sell the same stolen data over and over. One seller had 4.8 stars and glowing reviews praising “working credentials.” Like Etsy but for your accounts.

Here’s what we did immediately. Changed every single password. He wanted a password to be BeefStew, but I told him it wasn’t stroganoff. (Yeah, he groaned, too.)

To do all this work, I set him up with NordPass.* Here’s why it’s the one I use and trust:

Sometimes people need to see the threat to believe it’s real. The dark web is very real. And I bet that your passwords are already there.

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📩 Send this to someone who reuses the same password on multiple sites. The icons below make it one-click easy.

You know AI has taken over when even the millionaires have FOMO.

Silicon Valley banker Storm Duncan listed his 14-acre estate outside San Francisco. Asking price? Eight figures. Form of payment? Not cash. He wants Anthropic equity.

While some folks bet their fortunes ON AI, police are using it to dig into yours. A $195,000 bank robbery in Virginia had zero leads, so cops pulled Google location data from every phone near the scene. They caught the guy. The legal fight that followed could rewrite your privacy rights for good.

Plus: Apple’s foldable iPhone and iPad, a breach at security giant ADT and my best tricks for cheap flights.

Then Trevor in LA calls in. He’s mid-divorce and spotted a charge on his bank statement for spyware. He thinks his wife is tracking him. Spoiler: He might be right.

Hit play below now.

▶️ Man trading $8M estate for Anthropic stock →

Or for audio only, click your favorite podcast player below:

🚔 Roblox to federal prison: The FBI dropped a number that should stop every parent cold. The average age of an arrested cybercrime suspect is 19. Not 37 as in other crimes. Criminal networks recruit kids through gaming, promising easy money for hacking. One teen extorted a school database for $2.85 million in Bitcoin before the FBI kicked his room door in. He said the thrill was better than driving 120 mph. If your kid games, you need to be in that world with them.

Fake it till you chart it: Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter hit No. 1 on iTunes, but not far behind are four completely fake AI-generated songs. Yep. Four spots in the Top 10 are songs by artists who don’t exist, made entirely by AI, uploaded by anonymous accounts cashing in on streaming pennies. Dozens more are creeping into the Top 100. iTunes has no system to flag them. Neither does Spotify. So that “new artist” you discovered? Could be a server farm in Latvia. The music industry is officially in treble.

🔬 A glitch in how we age: A new study shows sugar binds to your collagen and stiffens it from the inside out. Scientists call it glycation, I call it a total system crash for your skin. It makes it nearly impossible for your body to repair itself. That’s one more reason to watch the sugar and start your morning with two scoops of NativePath Collagen. It gives your body the raw materials it needs to fight back. Right now, you can get 45% off, free shipping and bonus gifts. Your body will thank you.**

🍿 Drive-by drive-in: This is incredible. Huawei in China unveiled a full-color version of its XPixel headlights at the Beijing Auto Show, and the thing can turn a wall into a drive-in screen. Yes, your car’s headlights will show a movie. It also ties into driver-assist features, showing lane paths and telling pedestrians when to cross. In the U.S., we just got permission to stop blinding each other. Hey, it’s progress! 

Out of Mini stock: Apple’s Mac Mini is sold out for months. As in, you’re waiting until summer at the earliest. If you had your eye on that little powerhouse desktop for your home office, tough luck. Apple’s totally scrambling to keep up. Maybe a supply hiccup, maybe a refresh quietly on the way, nobody’s saying. If you spot one in stock, grab it like it’s the last roll of toilet paper in 2020. 

🧬 Body’s best assassin: You know how things in life hit the wrong target, your lawn sprinkler, your group text, Congress? Apparently, your T cells are better trained. For the first time ever, scientists captured a 3D view of how your immune system destroys cancer cells. The body’s killer T cells form a perfectly organized contact zone with their target, then strike with precision so tight they don’t damage healthy cells next door. More of a sniper than a shotgun. This breakthrough means researchers can design treatments that copy this precision. Better targeted therapies. Fewer side effects. That’s huge. I hate cancer.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Scrolled to the bottom of a web page or app on your iPhone? Tap the very top of the screen once, near the time or battery area, and you’ll fly back to the top instantly. Works in Messages, Mail, Safari and X. Sorry, Android folks, there’s no universal version, but some apps have their own “back to top” arrow near the bottom of the screen.

🎣 Phishing attacks don’t look like scams anymore. They look like a notification from your bank. An Amazon order. An email from your boss. What if you could see the trap before you clicked? Webroot’s real-time Web Threat Shield flags dangerous sites right in your search results. A little green checkmark means safe. No checkmark? Don’t touch it. Get my exclusive offer, 62% off Webroot Essentials now.*

Practice saying it right: Google Translate is adding “pronunciation practice” on Android. Type what you want translated in English, translate it to Spanish, then tap Practice at the bottom. Choose Pronounce, give it your best shot, and AI will analyze your speech. It shows where you went wrong, lets you hear the correct version, then you can try again. Your phone can judge your accent before a waiter does. Like this? Get more AI tips you’ll actually use in my free weekly Splash of AI newsletter.

🏋️ You don’t need a personal trainer: Get a cheap smart scale and a tape measure, then open a chatbot and enter your age, height, weight and activity level. Use your phone’s average daily steps for that part. Tell it how much weight you want to lose and ask how many calories you should eat per day. It’ll give you an estimate and meal plan. Track your weight once a week, stay in a calorie deficit and check back in eight weeks. Congrats, you just dodged a $200 “custom gym plan.”

Your Wi-Fi password is on your phone: Stop digging through router boxes. On iPhone, go to Settings > Wi-Fi, tap the (i) next to your network, tap Password, confirm with Face ID, and there it is. On Android, go to Settings > Network & Internet > Internet, tap your network, then Share. Saves everyone the “what’s your Wi-Fi?” conversation every single time.

🎙️ You don’t need a recording studio: Skip the $200+ audio editing software. Download Audacity, a free open-source audio editor that’s been the gold standard for 25 years. Record podcasts, clean up voice memos, cut out background noise, fade music in and out, even rescue an old cassette recording you digitized. Works on Windows, Mac and Linux. No subscription, no ads, no watermark on your final file. YouTube has a tutorial for every single button. Sound like a pro, pay like a cheapskate. 

You know how your vacuum has a “turbo mode” that mostly just gets louder? Yeah. Dreame Technology, the high-end robot vacuum company from China, decided that wasn’t enough. So they built a concept car. With actual rockets.

The Nebula Next 01 Jet Edition packs 1,876 electric horsepower, then bolts on two solid-fuel rocket boosters for a theoretical 0 to 60 in 0.9 seconds. That’s faster than you can say, “What could possibly go wrong?”

Perfect for beating the McDonald’s breakfast cutoff. Overkill for literally everything else. Relax, it’s not hitting roads anytime soon. When does a rocket take off, anyway? At noon. That’s when they take launch. Ouch.

🔜 Tomorrow: America is speaking thousands fewer words a day, and the silence is hitting kids first. I’ll break down how phones, texting and screen-filled homes are shrinking conversation and what that means for child development.

The answer: C) An estimated $3.5 billion per year. Yep, autocorrect’s mistakes are expensive. Researchers tracking workplace miscommunication attributed billions in lost productivity, wrong orders, botched logistics and customer service failures to autocorrect errors in professional settings. Among the disasters on record:

It’s the weekend, and “Share The Current” prizes are still up for grabs. My AI Prompt Hack Pack at three referrals shares 12 AI prompts I actually use and you will, too! A Komando mug or tumbler at 10 referrals. A hat at 25. A hoodie at 50. And at 100, a virtual sit-down with me. Your unique link is at the bottom of every issue. Go tell your people. 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, GEYILO, Dreame Tech

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