🚨 TSA wants face

In partnership with 

📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: I downloaded a prayer app. I’ll tell you which one it is, why it stuck and share six free alternatives. 

Happy Saturday to you, {{first_name | friend}}. 🤺 Let’s settle a long-standing digital debate. You’ve seen people do it, maybe you’re even guilty of it yourself. You double-tap or swipe up on your phone and frantically flick away every open app to save battery and make the phone run faster.

It’s a simple true or false: Regularly closing all your background apps is the best way to extend your smartphone’s battery life and boost its performance. Say your answer out loud right now, and check if you are correct at the end!

🪪 Someone steals your identity: The average victim loses over $1,100 and spends 200 hours cleaning up a mess they didn’t make. Not me. I use NordProtect. They watch the dark web 24/7, alert you to any changes and have dedicated recovery experts ready if fraud hits. Get 66% off today with my link.*

📻 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, or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch the entire show on YouTube. I’m wherever you are. — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

Sixty-five airports. One camera at every checkpoint. And three words almost nobody knows to say.

This spring, TSA’s Touchless ID program jumped from 15 airports to 65. Atlanta. LAX. JFK. Dallas. Boston. Miami. Orlando. Many more.

The pitch sounds great. Skip the ID, smile at the camera, walk through in five seconds.

Ninety-nine percent of travelers have no clue they can say no.

That stat isn’t from some scrappy privacy blog. It’s from TSA’s own oversight board. The signs at the checkpoint say “biometric identity technology.” Not “facial recognition.” I guess it sounds less creepy.

TSA’s older CAT-2 scanners run in 250+ airports. Two programs, one goal. Your face in a database. TSA wants to hit 430+ airports. 

TSA insists photos delete in seconds. Except in their “limited testing environment,” where they keep them longer. 

In 2024, a TSA subcontractor got breached, exposing 190,000 traveler images. You can change a stolen password. You can’t change your face.

There’s more. Federal testing shows facial recognition misidentifies Asian and African American travelers up to 100x more often than white men. Native Americans and women get flagged the most. The people the algorithm sees worst are the ones most likely to get pulled aside.

The bipartisan Traveler Privacy Protection Act would force TSA to stop nudging everyone into face scans and delete biometric data fast. It’s been stalled in Congress. For now, this one’s on us.

When you reach the camera, say: “Opt me out.” That’s it. The officer compares your physical ID to your face the old-fashioned way. Maybe 10 extra seconds. If an officer pushes back, ask for a supervisor and quote the opt-out policy.

FYI, this works at every TSA checkpoint. Every airport. Touchless ID lane or CAT-2 scanner, same three words. Your face is yours. Keep it that way.

What I still can’t grasp is, how does this work on two-faced people? (That hurt even me writing it.)

📩 Send this to someone who is flying anywhere this summer. Share this now:

Kathleen Tierney posted a Game of Thrones GIF as a joke on a city council page. One month later? Handcuffs. Now she’s suing for $3 million to prove a little snark shouldn’t be a crime. Also on this episode:

Then Sarah from Colorado calls in with a real-life nightmare. Someone’s flying a drone right outside her bathroom window, and she has a hunch who’s behind it. I hand her the tools to ground that Peeping Tom for good.

Hit play below right now. 👇

▶️ Lost a $121,000 job. Over a meme. →

Or for audio only, search “Komando” in your favorite podcast player.

⚡ Watts my salary? We’re getting to the point where chatbots need an F1 pit crew. AI data centers across the country are going up so fast that fresh trade school electricians are landing offers up to $260,000 a year. No dorm debt or campus meal plan. It’s hard hats and hyperscalers waving money. 

Pushing phony daisies: Scammers are building fake florist sites with AI-generated photos that look 100% legit. You order a bouquet for Mom and either get nothing, wilted twigs or a upgrade fee. One ring of phony local florists racked up nearly 500 BBB complaints. Stick with chains you know, or call your neighborhood florist directly. These crooks know how to nip Mother’s Day in the bud.

Chrome’s packed bag: A 4GB file named weights.bin has been showing up in some Chrome folders. It’s tied to Gemini Nano, Google’s local AI model for browser tricks like writing, summaries, autofill and scam detection. And get this. Deleting it may not stick if the AI features stay on. To disable: Chrome > Settings > System > turn off On-device AI. To delete the file, follow these steps. Spoiler: It’s not a fun time.

💥 Your backup will fail. Hard drives, laptops and external drives all die eventually. When they do, photos, tax docs and memories go with them. Professional recovery runs $300 to $3,000, if it works at all. That’s why I use Carbonite. It backs everything up automatically in the background, and one click brings it all back. Get total protection right now and save 50% with my link. Don’t wait until it’s too late.*

WhatsApp love trap: Got a single friend who suddenly has a soulmate in another time zone? Check in. AARP’s 2026 scam warning puts romance scams at the top of the heartbreak-and-bank-account list. The setup starts on dating apps or social media, then quickly moves to WhatsApp, where scammers can love-bomb without platform watchdogs.

🧬 Bot copies itself: Some AI models skipped coming for our jobs and went straight to making cousins. Researchers saw an AI system self-replicate, which is a very scientific way of saying the machine figured out how to make another machine. The Guardian called it a first outside the lab. If AI can copy itself without human help, it gets harder to control, contain or shut down if something goes sideways. As Scooby-Doo once said, ruh roh. 

(Starts at 49:44) Meet the world’s first AI store manager. Lukas Petersson of Andon Labs gave $100K to an AI agent named Luna to open a store. How’d it go? Luna didn’t only write code. She signed a lease, haggled with suppliers and hired human employees. The result? Andon Market, a boutique in SF.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: You can split your computer screen into four parts without resizing windows by hand. On Mac, press and hold Option, drag the window to any corner and release when it highlights. On Windows, drag an app to a corner, and it’ll snap into place. You’ve quadrupled your productivity. Or your procrastination.

💲 What is your phone bill actually costing you? If you are paying over $100 a month, you’re overspending. If you are 50 or older, you can get a single unlimited line for $35 and your second month free with my link. Same networks. Solid coverage. No contract. See how much you could save with Consumer Cellular.* 

⏰ iPhone reminders can scream: Some reminders are too important for a polite little notification. Create a reminder like usual, tap the i icon, then under Date & Time, turn on Urgent and set the date and time. It’ll trigger an alarm when it’s due. Way harder to miss. Your deadline can stop hiding behind 10 other notifications.

Find any photo, fast: Amazon Photos got a smart makeover. Instead of a boring grid, your best memories and On This Day are front and center in the app (iOS, Android). With Alexa+, say, “Show me photos from my trip to Hawaii,” and boom, they pop up on your Echo Show or Fire TV. Prime member? You’ve got unlimited photo storage. Use it.

📝 Edit Word docs from anywhere: Away from your desk doesn’t mean the document has to wait. Download Google Docs on iPhone or Android, email the Word file to yourself and open it in the app. If you know you’ll have no internet access later, tap More next to the file and hit Make available offline. Now open it from Menu > Offline.

Giorgia Meloni survived an AI scandal by doing something almost unheard of in modern politics: having a sense of humor.

After critics circulated a fake sexy image of Italy’s prime minister online, Meloni Uno-reversed it herself and deadpanned that the AI artist had “improved me quite a bit.” The internet instantly flipped from outrage to applause. She also warned voters of the growing wave of AI-generated political misinformation.

Imagine trying to destroy a politician, only for her to repost, giving her the energy of a divorced aunt on a yacht off Capri after two limoncellos.

🔜 Tomorrow: I downloaded a prayer app, and somehow it became the calmest part of my day. I’ll tell you all about it. Plus, in tomorrow’s trivia, how AI figured out what dolphins say. Really.

The answer: False. When an app is in the background, the system puts it in a low-power state. When you “force-quit” an app, then reopen it later, your phone has to reload every single bit of data from scratch. That takes a massive burst of CPU power and battery, far more than it would have used sitting in the background.

Speaking of, I meant to download a calendar app for my phone, but I downloaded a colander app. Now my battery keeps draining. 🥁

📑 Identity theft doesn’t come with an instruction manual: NordProtect is the closest thing to one. Dark web monitoring, real-time alerts, credit lock and a dedicated recovery expert ready to take over if things go sideways. You should never have to figure this out alone. Get 66% off today, just $4.74 a month. You’ll be glad you did, like I am.*

P.S. “Share The Current” has been going strong for weeks. People are on their phones. Your link is at the bottom of every issue. Three referrals get you my AI Prompt Hack Pack instantly. If you refer 10, you get a Komando mug or tumbler. Keep going, and there’s a hat, a hoodie and a virtual sit-down with me waiting. Don’t leave those on the table. 

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: thecurrent.komando.com/subscribe?ref={{rp_referral_code}}

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 }}. FYI: This only changes if the people you refer actually click to sign up for this free newsletter.

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): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, modari, @GiorgiaMeloni via X

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.