📵 Yes, your boss can take your phone

🤯 WOW! Schools are making students hand over their cellphones, and your workplace may follow. If you’re required to tuck your phone away in a secured pouch, read on to learn your legal rights and the emergency exceptions to bring up with your boss.

📖 Read time: 2.3 minutes

Kids in schools across the country are turning in their phones during class hours. Here’s the part nobody’s saying out loud. You’re next.

Yondr makes the lock pouches you’ve seen in schools, and it sells a workplace version for Fortune 500s, courts, warehouses and small businesses. Some bosses want your phone locked up before you clock in. Others go phone-free during “core hours.” (Their words, not mine.)

Your phone or smartwatch slides in, and a magnetic pin snaps the pouch shut. Same idea as the security tag on new jeans. You keep the pouch. It opens with a tap on an unlocking base at the exit door.

Yondr isn’t the only pouch player. Competing versions from ZenLocked and NutKase, locker systems such as Phone Locker and screen-locking apps like LockedIn are popping up everywhere. Going phone-free is officially a booming industry.

It’s not just about scrolling on the clock, either. A camera phone in a factory can walk out with the secret recipe. Your phone on company Wi-Fi is a side door for hackers.

Your employer can ban phone use during working hours. Can make you lock it up. Can write you up or fire you if you ignore the restrictions. All legal.

What they can’t do is keep your phone, go through it without your say-so or enforce the rule on you but not Kevin from accounting.

Two things to ask, in writing: How do you reach me in an emergency? How does my family reach me?

That’s not me being dramatic. A tornado leveled an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., in 2021. Six people died. The fight over Amazon’s phone ban went national overnight. Workers kept saying four words: We want the alerts. The company relaxed its policy.

Before you order a box of pouches for your business, look at the research. It’s messier than you’d think.

My take for bosses: Ban phones around dangerous machinery, in client meetings and near sensitive data. Leave the rest of the building alone. You hired adults. Treat ’em like it.

📩 Send this to someone who got handed a new phone policy at work.

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🚘 Dream car disappears: Your dream muscle car may be nothing more than pixels wearing a dealership logo. The FTC warns that scammers are cloning legitimate dealer sites with AI, right down to inventory photos and cheerful reviews, then collecting deposits for cars that don’t exist. If a seller keeps you away from the vehicle or lot, leave. Can’t be seen until the deposit is paid? Huge red flag. When a deal that good only exists on a screen, keep your wallet in park. 

🟩 Wordle, solved by math: Two Binghamton University researchers used information theory to win Wordle 99% of the time, versus 90% for guessing common letters. The idea flips how most of us play: don't pick the word most likely to be right, pick the word that eliminates the most possibilities. Translation for your family group chat: guess ADIEU less, learn faster. Got time? Here’s their report.

💲 What is your phone bill actually costing you? Be honest with me, it’s on auto-pay and you haven’t looked at the line items since 2019. I was shocked. If you’re paying over a hundred bucks a month, you’re officially overspending. Right now, for a limited time, get $100 off your bill on any unlimited plan with Consumer Cellular. If you’re over 50, that’s a single line of unlimited talk, text and data for just $35 a month plus $100 off. Offer ends Nov. 1.* 

🛻 Truck stop, literally: Ford is recalling 223,472 F-150 pickups, model years 2023 through 2027, because the fuel tank straps can fail and the tank can leak or drop off while you're driving. NHTSA's words: a detached tank creates a road hazard, and a fuel leak can stall the engine or start a fire. Dealers will inspect and replace the straps free. Own one, or know someone who does? Type the VIN into nhtsa.gov/recalls, then call the dealer.

Desire never retires: Imagine a 78-year-old at the kitchen table, calmly explaining dating after divorce while Gen Z takes notes. That’s happening online as creators in their 60s, 70s and 80s offer frank advice (paywall link) on intimacy, consent, loneliness and changing bodies. Better than the 18-year-old telling you to get out there. The advice sounds refreshingly normal: Communicate, laugh, be honest and stop treating age like romance’s eviction notice.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Gmail has a secret split view that saves you from opening an email, reading it, then clicking back to your inbox every single time. Click the Settings gear, then under Reading Pane, choose Right of inbox or Below inbox. Your message list stays visible while you read, so working through a busy inbox feels a whole lot less clicky.

🌐 You’ve been saying “I need a website” for years: I know because I hear it constantly. Hostinger’s AI builds the whole thing from one sentence. I built Barry a site in minutes and it’s gorgeous. Site, store, email and domain all in one account. 30 day money-back guarantee. Plans start at $2.99 a month. Get an extra 10% off at Hostinger.com/Kim with code KIM10. You can move your site from another host to them, too! I did that with a GoDaddy site.* 

🍏 iOS 27 is here: Go to Settings > General > Software Update to grab it. The big one? Siri can finally hold a more natural, chatbot-style conversation. There’s also AI photo editing, like easily removing unwanted details or telling Siri what you want changed. Plus, there are new customization options for Liquid Glass, updates to Health, Photos, Notes and more. FYI, you’ll need an iPhone 11 or newer. (Some features depend on your model.)

🔄 Update your Android: Google rolled out a security patch fixing 180 bugs. The scary part? One of them affects Wi-Fi and could let a hacker run malicious code on your phone remotely, without you tapping or installing anything. 😱 Go to Settings > System > Software Update and install it today. Takes a few minutes. 

📊 Find out what’s slowing YouTube down: If a video keeps buffering, you can check what’s going on. On desktop, right-click the video > Stats for nerds to see connection speed, dropped frames and buffer health. On mobile, tap You > Settings > General > Enable stats for nerds. During a video, open Settings > More > Stats for nerds. No more blaming the Wi-Fi without evidence. 

⏰ Microsoft’s about to pull the plug on a few things: Publisher exits Microsoft 365 on Oct. 1, Project Online shuts down Sept. 30 and Office 2021 support ends Oct. 13. If your company runs on any of these, start migrating. FREE swaps worth knowing: Canva for flyers, ProjectLibre Desktop for project management, LibreOffice or Google Workspace for everyday docs. Publisher made it to 35. Pour one out for every church bulletin and garage-sale flyer it ever made.

Nothing prepares you for opening the pet cam and realizing your cat has been expecting this meeting.

One woman checked her home security feed and found her cat planted directly in front of the camera, staring into the lens with the energy of an HR manager who found out your secret group chat. 

The clip exploded on Reddit, the HQ of cat owners. One comment was perfect: “My bowl is empty, Mother.” Your cat doesn’t need a security system. It has you under surveillance.

Watch the whole thing unfold here. What did the cat say on his cellphone? Can you hear meow?

🎓 What you learned today: Your boss can lock up your phone, but not keep it, search it or ban it for you and not Kevin. Ask two questions in writing: how do you reach me in an emergency, and how does my family? Then update your iPhone (iOS 27 is out) and your Android (180 bugs), and go check your F-150's VIN. Oh your money is a row in a database.

🔜 Tomorrow: The day AI ends humanity won't look like a movie. It'll look like a Tuesday. I'll show you the facts that convinced me, and the one thing I think we can still do about it. Set a reminder to read your newsletter tomorrow.

🏦 The answer: A) Around 8%. Yep. The rest of the money is numbers in a database. Nobody tells you your savings aren’t in a vault, they’re a row in a table on a server. This is why a bank breach and a bank robbery are almost the same crime, but only one of them requires leaving the house.

I hear you: “Dear God, my prayer is for a fat bank account and a thin body. Please don't mix it up like last year.” (lol)

🔒 Free Wi-Fi costs more than you think: Every time you connect at an airport, hotel or coffee shop, your data is visible to anyone on that network. Two taps on NordVPN, and everything is encrypted. Covers 10 devices on one account. It’s the VPN I run on my own devices. Get 76% off a 2-year plan. That is $3.37 a month.* 

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): Yondr, HOTO, @Dizzy_Log2916 via Reddit

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