🚨 Wi-Fi watches your body

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Whoa, it’s almost the last Friday of summer, {{first_name | friend}}. I was Home Depot the other day and they had Christmas decorations up.

OK, today’s workplace crisis isn’t inflation, AI or the office microwave fish incident. It’s an emoji. A tiny cartoon has become a generational land mine. Somewhere, a manager named Greg is unknowingly detonating morale with one tap. Maybe you send it 20 times a day. 

A viral survey asked Gen Zers how they interpret certain emojis from coworkers, and the reviews were less than stellar for this particular one. 

🎉 Which emoji got dragged into the workplace group chat of shame? A) 🙂 The plain smiley, B) 👍 The thumbs-up, C) 👌 The OK sign or D) 😂 The crying-laughing face? The answer awaits at the end, assuming the emojis don’t unionize first.

💥 Your hard drive is going to crash. Not if. When. Every photo, every document, every file gone. Data recovery costs $300 to $3,000, if the techs can recover anything at all. That’s why I use Carbonite. Automatic. Silent. Save 50% and start protecting everything today.* — Kim

📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. 

🤯 WOW! Comcast made Wi-Fi motion sensing a headline feature on millions of Xfinity gateways. Your router reads the ripples your body makes in the signal: which room you’re in, standing or lying down, through walls, no camera, no light. And the fine print says motion data can go to law enforcement “without further notice to you.”

The Short Version: Open your router app, hunt for anything labeled motion, sensing or Shield, and turn off what you didn’t turn on. Steps below.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

I bet you never thought of this. Comcast and others hope you never do. Let me explain.

Every Wi-Fi signal in your house bounces off the walls, the couch and you. Wi-Fi sensing reads the ripples your body makes. A few weeks of that, and the box knows when you wake up, when the house sits empty and which nights you fell asleep in the recliner. 

That’s not a motion alert. That’s a diary.

Researchers have identified specific people by their signal ripple with near-perfect accuracy. Not “someone’s home.” You.

Comcast’s new Xfinity Shield turns any XB7-or-newer gateway into a motion detector, free. Your printer, smart plugs and Xbox become the sensors. $15 a month adds a camera and 24/7 response. Comcast’s pitch: “The network should do more than connect devices.” Linksys sells a version called Aware.

Now the fine print. 

Comcast’s policy says it may disclose Wi-Fi motion data “without further notice to you” for any law enforcement investigation, any dispute Comcast is in or a subpoena. Comcast says it doesn’t monitor the motion. Fine. The door’s still open. Your camera has a light. Your mic has a rule. This has neither.

Bright side: This can catch Grandma’s fall without a camera in her bathroom. Used with consent, I like it. Used quietly, I don’t.

Five minutes. The opt-out nobody covers.

I don’t mean to be negative on tech. I think it’s important that you’re aware of what’s really happening. Usually, it’s collecting data to sell to who knows who so that they can target market you with ads or worse.

🎯 Send this to someone who rents their router and has never opened the app it came with. Every always-on gadget is an antenna. The bedroom doesn't need four.

📱 Text-worthy: Comcast just made Wi-Fi motion sensing a headline feature on millions of Xfinity routers. It reads how your body ripples the signal: which room, standing or lying down, through walls, no camera. The fine print says motion data can be subpoenaed. Open your router app, find “motion” or “Shield,” and shut off what you didn’t turn on.

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Can AI find your dream property? The answer is yes. It can. You just need the right words. We help a listener get the job done.

Watch now before everyone else is talking about it. 👇

▶️ Can AI find your dream mountain property? →

⏰ Insta-grounded: Meta is trying to convince us that it’s about to become the strictest parent in your house. Its $17.1 billion settlement with states requires two-hour app limits, pauses at 60 and 90 minutes, no overnight or school-hour pings, and an option to ditch personalized feeds. It also removes likes and cosmetic-surgery filters for teens. I like the guardrails. This isn't going to work, sadly. Somewhere, a teenager is already logging in as Grandma. It sure is.

Chat's incriminating: Now even courts are saying what I’ve said out loud: chatbot chats lack the special confidentiality of a doctor or attorney. Lawyers can demand them in lawsuits. That includes the health scare you researched, the boss you vented about, or the marriage question you thought stayed between you and a screen. Type like a judge is reading over your shoulder.

🔑 Password-guessing attacks jumped 155x: Crooks take one lazy password and slam it against thousands of accounts. The fix: a unique, uncrackable password for every login. Nobody can memorize 200 of those. That's why I trust NordPass. It creates them, remembers them, fills them in, and alerts you if your info leaks. Get 55% off, only $1.34/month, plus 4 extra months free.*

🚪 Doorstep card theft: They’ll call pretending to be your bank, then send a stranger to your porch to steal your credit card. Police are warning about a scam in which a caller invents fraudulent charges, acts helpful and arranges pickup of the supposedly compromised card. It’s frighteningly ordinary, especially for seniors who trust a calm voice. Banks and the FBI don’t collect cards or recruit customers for investigations, and they’re not suddenly starting this year. If you have doubts, call the number printed on your card.

🎶 One more song: America lost a good one this week, but she’s not done. Dolly Parton scheduled an encore for 2046. Her final recorded song, “My Place in History,” is sealed inside a chestnut box at Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort in Tennessee, complete with a CD player and orders to wait until her 100th birthday. She told Kelly Clarkson in 2022 that she badly wanted to dig it up herself. I met her at the Kentucky Derby one year. I was standing next to Loni Anderson and she looked at me and said in that accent, “Well, aren’t you the prettiest thing! Are you singing today?” I laughed at that. I remember thinking how lovely a person she was. Save us a song, Dolly. We'll wait.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Alexa making you repeat yourself? Move it away from the wall or corner, so the microphone can hear you. Nine times out of 10, it just needed breathing room. No luck? Do the ol’ 10-second unplug and plug back in. Worst case, bump up the wake-word sensitivity in the app. What does Alexa eat for breakfast? Siri-al.

📱 Hand over one app, not your whole phone: Maybe someone needs directions, or your kid wants to play a game. On iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Guided Access, then triple-click the side button to start it. On Android, try Settings > Security and privacy > Allow apps to be pinned. Open the app, pin it and they’ll need your passcode to get out.

🎓 College students, Google’s giving you $240: One year of its AI Pro plan, free, instead of $20 a month. That’s more Google storage, four times the usage limits and extra Gemini tools. Then set a reminder to cancel before the year’s up, unless you want a surprise bill with your diploma. 😅 

👀 See the people you care about first: Facebook lets you put certain friends and pages ahead of the algorithm. Go to Menu > Feeds > Favorites > Manage Favorites, then add whoever you want. Their posts get pushed higher, plus you get a separate Favorites feed. Because Aunt Linda’s vacation pics should outrank another random pressure-washing video.

💾 Those saved videos are chewing through your storage: Before you pay for more cloud space, try HandBrake. It’s free on Mac and Windows and can shrink video files while keeping the quality looking almost the same. Drag in a video, pick a Preset like 1080p, then hit Start Encode. Watch the new copy before deleting the original.

Sharks spent millions of years becoming apex predators, only to meet their natural enemy: someone with a waterproof phone case.

Researchers say more people are getting bitten after entering shark territory for photos and videos, even though overall attacks remain rare at about 70 annually. Some creators argue that swimming with, touching or filming sharks promotes conservation. 

Shark experts are less convinced about the world’s most dangerous selfie booth, saying harassment doesn’t magically become science because somebody added a GoPro.

It does make for some interesting footage at least. What do a shark and a computer have in common? Megabites.

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🎓 What you learned today: Wi-Fi sensing turns routers into motion trackers, Meta’s settlement tries new app guardrails, chatbot chats keep ending up in court and shark selfie attempts confirm the ocean has boundaries. Not bad for one email. Tomorrow, a reader is worried about her brother who’s convinced he’s in a romance with Katy Perry, a commitment that’s cost him $45,000. I’ll show you the gentle way to break a scammer’s spell over a loved one. Don’t miss it in your inbox.

😀 The answer: B) 👍 The thumbs-up. To everyone over 40, it means “approved.” To a chunk of Gen Z, it lands like a door closing. They’d rather no reply at all.  

You don’t have to change. But if you’re texting across generations, words beat glyphs for anything that matters. “Sounds great, thank you!” usually can’t be misread by anyone born in any decade.

Know the double meanings: 💀 means “that’s hilarious,” not death. 😂 is aging out in favor of 💀. Nobody voted on this.

The safe list: ❤️ and 🎉 read warm in every generation. When in doubt, party popper. A whole generation canceled the thumbs-up. 👍

💻 Imagine turning on your computer tomorrow to a black screen. Baby photos, tax returns, everything gone. Hard drives have a 100% failure rate eventually. I don’t gamble with my memories, and neither should you. Carbonite backs up every file automatically, silently, without you touching a thing. Save 50% right now.*

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.

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, ThxToms, @taydalazen via Instagram

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