👀 What your car knows about you

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📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: Instagram suddenly removed end-to-end encryption from direct messages. Every photo, voice note and message you send is now readable by Meta and shareable with law enforcement.

Hey there, it’s Thursday, {{first_name | friend}}. Ever look at that Uber fare and think the driver’s doing alright? You hand over $40 for an hour ride. Not bad, but then you realize that’s before gas, maintenance, depreciation, insurance and taxes get their slice. 

🚗 The final number is less glamorous. Guess how much the average Uber driver takes home per hour, after expenses: A) $25-$30, B) $20-$25, C) $9-$15 or D) One parking ticket and a prayer? Answer below. Spoiler, it's not the number Uber uses in their ads.

🔎 Whoa! Your name in a search box is all it takes. No hack, no breach. Only your name, and suddenly your home address, age, politics, and phone number are available to anyone willing to look. I use a service that sends removal requests to data broker sites on my behalf and keeps my information gone for good. You ought to do the same. Get 60% off now.* — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

Cars used to only know how far you wanted the seat from the gas pedal. Now they know everyone in your contacts, every text you got, the code to your garage and the address you typed in last March when you had that thing. Most drivers have no idea.

I typed my VIN into a free site and got the rundown on mine. So can you. Takes 90 seconds.

You see. cars sold since 2018 are basically smartphones with seats. They store everything you tap. They share with anyone who asks. And nobody told you when you bought it.

It’s called Vehicle Privacy Report. Free. No sign-up. Punch in your VIN, the 17-digit number on your dashboard or insurance card.

It tells you three things: what data your car collects, who it shares it with (insurance companies, advertisers, manufacturers, “law enforcement when requested”) and whether your dealer can wipe the info before you trade the vehicle in.

The FTC slapped GM and OnStar in January with a five-year ban on selling driver behavior data to consumer reporting agencies. One small win. The rest of the industry? Still fair game.

My car has Spotify paired and shares location data with my insurer. None of that surprised me. But the report flagged three things I didn’t know: A garage code was still saved from a 2024 rental, my car is selling my driving speeds to data brokers, and the previous owner’s data was still on the system when I bought it.

Nine out of 10 dealers promise they’ll wipe customer data from trade-ins. But studies show 8 out of 10 used cars on lots have prior users’ home addresses, garage codes, contacts and text messages stored.

If you’re trading in, demand a certificate of deletion from the dealer. Most take 90 seconds. If your dealer says no, walk.

📩 Send this to someone who is trading in or selling their car. The links below make the magic happen.

Kathleen Tierney posted a Game of Thrones GIF as a joke on a city council page. A month later, she ended up in handcuffs for it. And lost her six-figure job. Now, she’s suing for $3 million to prove that snark isn’t a crime.

Plus, Bill Gates’ ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Google Home’s new Gemini live search and how your gas app snitches to your insurance company.

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😱 Scam, camera, action: Picture running your small business, probably answering emails between errands, then a criminal drops fake AI images in your inbox, demanding money. That happened to a single mom entrepreneur. Criminals sent fake images and threats, then pushed for money before she could think straight. They target small-business owners because many are alone with no IT backup. If this ever happens to you or someone you know, do not pay. Call 1-800-CALL-FBI first.

Shutter shocked: Shutterstock finally got caught trapping subscribers in sneaky auto-renewal schemes that were nearly impossible to cancel. The FTC hit them with a $35 million settlement for making cancellation so hard it bordered on criminal. They’d bury the exit in fine print and charge your card anyway. Were you a subscriber between 2018 and 2025? You may be owed money. The FTC calls it “negative option” billing. I call it a racket.

Robot tire shift: I have aged entire fiscal quarters in tire shop waiting rooms. A new AI-powered robot can swap your tires and balance them in under 30 minutes, using machine vision to run the job from start to finish without a human doing the wrenching. Shops could roll these out fast, which sounds great if it lowers the bill. Based on my tire shop experiences? Probably not.

💪🏼 That app from 2021 is probably still charging you. So is the free trial that quietly became $12 a month. You need to hunt down every subscription you forgot about, line them up in one dashboard and cancel the ones you don’t want. Who has the time? I used this app and saved $465 a year. Try it now yourself.* 

Chrome gets evicted: Google apparently looked at Chromebook and said, “Needs more Google.” Yep, the company teased a new premium laptop lineup called Googlebook, and it swaps Chrome OS for Android with aluminum hardware instead of the cheap plastic school-cart special. Relax, your Chromebook isn’t turning into a pumpkin tonight. But Chrome OS got handed a cardboard box and told security would walk it out. 

👶 Bundle of algorithms: A company called Conceivable built a 17-foot AI-powered robotic assembly line that handles the entire IVF process. It selects sperm, fertilizes eggs, cultures embryos, scores each one, then picks the best candidate to implant. In a pilot study, it hit a 51% pregnancy rate and produced 19 healthy babies. For the one-in-six people who struggle with infertility, that is genuinely life-changing news. AI scoring embryos on “viability” is one small step from AI scoring them on traits. Intelligence. Height. Eye color. The question isn’t if that conversation is coming. It’s when. And yes, technically these are the world’s first kids born with a 5-star rating.

The traditional MBA is flunking out. Enrollment is tanking, and schools are slashing tuition by 40%. Even employers aren’t impressed by diplomas anymore. Targeted AI credentials are where the real money is.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Your phone may be sneaking onto cellular at home. If Wi-Fi gets weak, it can switch over and start nibbling through your data plan. Make it a habit to shut mobile data off on your own Wi-Fi. On Android, swipe down and disable Mobile data. On iPhone, open Control Center > Cellular Data.

Windows May update is out: Microsoft fixed over 100 security flaws and added a few extras as promised. ICYMI: Xbox mode is rolling out, FAT32 formatting goes up to 2TB, File Explorer is faster and the taskbar supports AI agents. Open Settings > Windows Update to get it. Apparently Xbox mode isn’t available to everyone yet, but check under Settings > Gaming > Xbox mode.

🗂️ Put your Chrome tabs in groups: This one’s for folks who like to have 30 links open at once. Right-click the first tab and select Add tab to new group. Then right-click any others and choose Add tab to group. Name it, color-code it and click the group name to collapse or reopen them. Next time you reopen your browser, you can bring them all back. 

Flip your Apple Watch screen: Wearing your watch on the other wrist? Flip the display, so the Digital Crown sits where you want it. On the watch, open Settings > General > Orientation and choose Left or Right. Or use your iPhone: Watch app > General > Watch Orientation. Bonus: If your band’s seen better days, grab a 10-pack of colors for $10.

Find your cursor faster: Losing the tiny blinking line in a long document? Both Windows and Mac can help. On Windows, go to Settings > Accessibility > Text cursor and turn on Text cursor indicator. Pick your color and size. On Mac, go to System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Pointer and drag the Pointer Size slider up. Bonus Mac trick: shake your mouse quickly and the cursor balloons to giant size so you can spot it instantly. Works every time. Brilliant.

Remember Tamagotchis? Those tiny digital pets that taught an entire generation parenting guilt? NYU students not only made them worse, they made them worse for you. 

At the school’s Stupid Hackathon, two students unveiled a vape with a built-in Tamagotchi that survives only when the user takes another puff. This cyberpunk science fair project tracks the vape’s voltage and rewards nicotine intake with continued digital life. 

The kicker? The creators originally thought about making it anti-vaping before realizing evil was funnier. You could say this little guy is running on fumes. Literally.

Watch this crazy idea and others from the Hackathon.

Share this now:

🔜 Tomorrow: Instagram killed end-to-end encryption on DMs. I’ll tell you what Meta doesn’t want you to know tomorrow.

And in tomorrow’s trivia, the sci-fi movie that predicted your phone, your eyeballs and ads getting way too personal. Make a guess and find out if you’re right then.

🚗 The answer: $9 to $15 per hour after expenses. Gridwise’s data from 66,000+ drivers found a median gross pay of $21.18/hour, but that number gets cut down fast after all the maintenance, insurance, depreciation and self-employment taxes. The Economic Policy Institute estimated the W-2-equivalent wage at $9.21/hour.

So after that $40 ride to the airport, your driver might clear about $9 of it. That’s awful.

I drove for Uber once. Trouble is, my passengers didn’t appreciate it when I went the extra mile. (Oh, that was so bad!)

🗑️ Tired of the constant spam and scam calls? It starts with data brokers auctioning off your home address and phone number. I use Incogni because they do the hard work of removing my info from hundreds of broker sites. It actually works to keep my inbox clean and my phone silent. Take your data off the market with Incogni. Get 60% off with code KIM60.*

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, HPBS, Rebecca Xun/Lucia Camacho

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