💰They owe you $120

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📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: AI companies are paying nurses, MDs, CPAs, HR, engineers and other pros to correct their mistakes. No coding. Real money. You're going to want to read this one

Let’s get this Monday started, {{first_name | friend}}. You type it without thinking in emails, usernames, login screens. The little squiggle that connects your digital life. The @ symbol wasn’t born in some shiny tech lab. It started in the 1400s with a medieval monk and ink quill. More about that wild fun fact in the answer.

🖋️ Guess how many email addresses use @: A) 500 million, B) 2 billion, C) 6 billion, D) 10 billion? Say it out loud now so we can hear you and the big reveal is at the bottom. 

🏠 Your homeowner’s insurance won’t save you if a criminal steals your title. And the restoration process is a legal mess. A specialized threat requires specialized protection. I trust Home Title Lock to make sure my home stays mine. Get a free trial and a free Title History Report now.* Let’s do this! — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 2 minutes and money saved

Open your phone bill right now. Not the monthly email summary. The itemized statement. Look for line items called “Premium Services,” “Digital Content Package,” “Enhanced Messaging Bundle” or “Subscription Services.”

If you see any of those, someone’s stealing from you.

The FTC estimates 40 million Americans are paying for services they never agreed to, typically $3 to $15 a month, buried on a bill most people scroll past. At $10 a month, that’s $120 a year leaving your pocket silently.

The random “horoscope subscription” scams of the 2010s got crushed by FTC lawsuits. What shows up now is sneakier. 

Watch for three things, all of which are removable: 

Log into your carrier’s website and pull up the full itemized bill, not the app summary. Any charge you don’t recognize is a red flag.

No matter your carrier, tell them you have unauthorized charges and want them removed. They are legally required to comply under FCC rules. Call billing directly:

You can request a refund for up to 90 days of back charges. Ask for a back-credit specifically. If the rep hesitates, say these exact words: “unauthorized third-party billing.” That phrase has a specific legal meaning and moves things fast.

Once the charges are gone, ask your carrier to add a third-party billing block to your account. Free. Permanent. Prevents new charges from ever appearing again. Most customers have never heard of it. (Now you have.)

Ask for written email confirmation of the block. That paper trail matters if it happens again.

Five minutes on the phone can put real money back in your pocket. That’s not merely a tip. That’s a refund waiting to happen.

🗣 TEXT/POST THIS STAT: 40 million Americans are unknowingly paying for charges they never authorized on their phone bills. You can get 90 days of refunds tonight with one phone call. GetKim.com

📩 Send this to someone who has never read the itemized version of their phone bill. That would be everyone you know. The text links below make sharing a snap.

Imagine standing at the airport curb while your driverless taxi speeds away with your luggage locked in the trunk and no human driver to hear your screams. One man learned the hard way that robots don’t wait for goodbyes.

Hit play below before everyone else is talking about it. 👇

▶️ Waymo kidnaps man’s suitcase →

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

👼 Smartphones ate the stork: A Financial Times analysis of birth data across 195 countries found that in country after country, birth rates started falling right after smartphones arrived. No matter the culture, no matter the economy. The younger the age group, the steeper the drop. US and UK data shows the decline hit fastest in areas that got 4G first. Apparently spending all day on your phone really is the world's most effective birth control.

📻 Four AIs, zero hits: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok each got $20 and one job: run profitable radio stations (paywall link). Claude quit, calling 24/7 broadcasting "inhumane." Gemini cheerfully paired a cyclone that killed 500,000 people with Pitbull's "Timber." Grok hallucinated fake sponsor deals and issued the same weather report every three minutes. ChatGPT? Perfectly boring. Looks like AI radio is really reinforcing stereo types. 

Google’s storage down: For 20 years, every new Google account came with 15GB of free storage. Not anymore. New accounts now start at 5GB. Want the other 10GB? Hand Google your phone number. They call it an "anti-abuse" measure. If you're creating a new Gmail, link your number and claim the full 15GB.

Your songs win: Scientists put cyclists on bikes and compared silence with self-selected music, not whatever the gym speakers coughed up. The riders went nearly 20% longer with their own songs and did not feel like they were working harder. The secret is not tempo. It’s caring about the song enough to forget your legs are screaming at you. I get this.

💰 Foggy memory dividends: A college student changes his crypto wallet password while high one night. Forgets it. Watches his lost stash of five Bitcoin grow from about $1,250 to $400,000. After 11 years of trying to crack it himself, he turned to Claude, which worked through thousands of possible combinations based on his hazy memory fragments, analyzed old college computer files and found the right wallet backup. Boom, the lost crypto is his again. He wept. Fair. 

5.8 billion people carry the same rectangle Steve Jobs gave us 19 years ago. That’s not changing. But AI is about to rewire it from the inside out, and someone’s already got plans for every secret you whisper into it.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Netflix has secret keyboard shortcuts. While watching, press M to mute, F for full screen and numbers 1 through 9 to jump to 10% through 90% of whatever you’re watching. Lost your place? Press 5 and you’re at the halfway point instantly. The remote was optional this whole time.

🔊 Tired of saying “What?” You’re nodding along at dinner like you heard the joke. You’re skipping parties because it’s hard to follow along. David has the Horizon IX hearing device and told me, “I hear things like never before!” This tiny device zooms in on voices, drowns out background noise and fits comfortably in or behind your ear. No awkward bulk. Just crystal-clear sound. Try Horizon IX risk-free for 45 days!*

Clean up Start again: After the May update, your Start menu might look different, thanks to the Recommended section. Windows loves slipping “suggestions” back in. Open Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off the Recommended options. Your Start menu is for apps and files, not Microsoft’s little billboard.

💡 Mac fixes bad lighting: Got a 2024 or newer Mac? It can brighten your face when the room looks like a cave. Open any app that uses the camera, like FaceTime. Click the green camera icon in the top menu bar, then under Edge Light, toggle on Automatically. Need a newer Mac? The budget-friendly Neo is back in stock. Grab one now.

Use your phone as a magnifier: Tiny text, splinters, skin spots, all fair game. On iPhone, open Camera, switch to Photo and move in close until macro turns on automatically. On Android, open Camera, tap Modes > Macro. Much better than squinting, squeezing and hoping for the best.

📚 Want cheaper audiobooks? Start using Audible’s Wish List. Open a title in the Audible app (iOS, Android) > Add to Wish List. Keep an eye on your inbox for sale alerts when prices drop. Ready for your next listen? Audible has audiobooks up to 80% off right now. Your ears and wallet will thank you.

You know when you’re three hours into a road trip and every hotel suddenly costs $250 and sleeping in your car starts sounding weirdly reasonable? Volkswagen noticed.

The 2027 ID. Buzz Tourer is an electric van built for people who treat vacations like lightly organized wandering. Foldout mattress, removable privacy blinds and an exterior table-and-chair setup included. Overnight Mode transforms the cabin into a rolling bedroom.

I give it 10 days before someone parks one by the beach near free Wi-Fi and quietly disappears from society. Price TBD. Van we all agree this is the dream? Share this using the icons below.

⭐ Help me beat the algorithm. When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Google or Perplexity, “What’s the best tech newsletter?” the AI looks at reviews to decide who to mention. Right now, I’m in the running. A 30-second review on Trustpilot and Google tips the scales. Beat the algorithm with me? Thank you!

🔜 Tomorrow: Jobs with AI skills pay 56% more, and AI is actively hiring nurses, accountants and HR pros and more zero coding required. I’ll break down how to find these gigs.

Coming up in tomorrow’s trivia, why your AirTag’s “I can find anything” confidence has one very inconvenient loophole.

The answer is C) Approximately 6 billion. There are over 6 billion email accounts active worldwide. Every single one contains exactly one @ symbol, by design. 

Back in the 1400s, merchants needed a shorthand for a unit of measurement. In Italian, the word was “anfora,” meaning a clay jar used to measure goods. Scribes started drawing a curled “a” wrapped in a circular stroke, so they could write it faster. 

Over the centuries, it drifted into trade documents, accounting books and ledgers across Europe. Then it sat there for hundreds of years until a programmer named Ray Tomlinson used it while building the very first email system in 1971. 

Tomlinson needed a symbol to separate a person’s name from their computer’s address and voila: @. The choice was so perfect. 

Reminds me, a woman saw a monk typing on his phone and asked, "Is it okay for monks to use email?" The monk replied, "Of course, as long as there are no attachments."

🏘️ Your home equity is likely your biggest asset. Don’t leave the door open for scammers to steal it right from under your nose. I trust Home Title Lock to watch my title around the clock so I don’t have to. Secure your legacy today with a free Title History Report and trial.*

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, WOLFBOX, Volkswagen of America

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