💵 You’re their inventory

Brought to you by 

📬 Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Tomorrow: Most elevator close-door buttons have never done a thing. I’ll tell you what else has been quietly lying to you. 

Welcome to your Wednesday, {{first_name | friend}}. Once upon a time, Americans went to stores. Wild, I know. We touched carts. We made eye contact. We forgot why we came. Now? We summon dish soap to our porch by talking to a speaker. 

Amazon wormed its way so deep into American life that “I’ll just Prime it” is the new store run. The number of people who pay Amazon an annual fee, $139 a year, for free shipping, Prime Video and the rest of the bundle puts the whole thing in perspective.

📦 How many people in the U.S. are paid Amazon Prime members? A) About 50 million, B) About 100 million, C) About 180 million or D) Everyone except that guy, who still won’t put his credit card number in a computer? Don’t peek, the answer’s tucked at the end like a receipt in a drawer. 

💧 I write this for you: Get my Splash of AI free newsletter every Thursday. I’ll show you how to turn “get healthier” into a real 90-day plan, make AIs fact-check each other, avoid fake support numbers, understand AI pool watchers and make better-looking designs without wrestling text boxes. Yours free. Sign up at SplashOfAI.com, so it hits your inbox tomorrow morning. — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

Patrick, I love this question, because it’s exactly what the data brokers are counting on you to believe. That it’s already out there, so why bother?

That’s like saying your front door’s been unlocked for years, so why start locking it now?

Your data is what lets a scammer call and sound like he knows you. It’s what quietly bumps your insurance quote. You’re paying to stop being low-hanging fruit.

You didn’t take a single Facebook quiz today. Doesn’t matter. A company you’ve never heard of is holding a digital twin of you. It knows your income, your prescriptions, your politics and the precise spot where your phone spent the night. (Yes. Your bedroom.)

Welcome to the data broker industry. A $250 billion economy. To them, you aren’t a customer. You’re inventory. And they will sell your data to literally anyone who wants to buy it. There are no checks and balances. If you got the cash, you get the data.

Acxiom, one of the biggest brokers, claims files on 2.5 billion people, with up to 3,000 details apiece.

They don’t know you. They sort you by your weak spots. A Senate investigation caught brokers selling lists titled “Rural and Barely Making It” and “Tough Start: Young Single Parents.” 

One company even sold a list called “Rape Sufferers.” Yes. That exists. Another, “Suffering Seniors,” went to scammers who used it to hunt the elderly. Nice.

Look up a scary symptom at 2 a.m.? That worry gets bundled and sold to insurers who use it to raise your premiums.

The price? Your full profile often sells for about 36 cents. Your whole life, marked down to less than a stick of gum.

Most people tweak a few settings and assume they’re safe. They’re not.

Even if you delete every app, you still live inside a “shadow profile,” built from data other people hand over. Every time a friend syncs their contacts, your name and number ride along. Brokers backfill the rest from public records. You can’t opt out of being in someone else’s address book.

You can fight back. Every major broker has an opt-out, usually buried deep on its site. But they re-add you every few months, so doing it by hand is a losing game of whack-a-mole.

That’s why I let a service do it for me. Incogni has made 2,789 removal requests on my behalf, hunting down brokers and firing off deletion demands again and again.

✅ Get 60% off at privacykim.com with code KIM60.

You did nothing wrong. You turned into inventory. Time to take your life off their shelves.

📩 Send this to someone who still says they “have nothing to hide,” not realizing their medical and money worries are being sold to corporate bidders for pennies. Use the handy links below. That’s why they are there.

Share this now:

Land is running out of room for data centers. Next move? Floating AI centers. Completely powered by ocean waves. Billionaire Peter Thiel is backing it.

Hit the link below, so you’re in the know. 👇

▶️ Data centers are moving to the ocean →

📡 Router rustlers strike: Your old router may be doing crimes while you make coffee. Researchers recently found thousands of aging D-Link routers infected by AryStinger, a botnet turning forgotten home internet boxes into rental cars for criminals. Old routers stop getting security updates, which makes them easy pickings. If yours is more than 5 years old or the maker stopped patching it, replace it, and reboot it tonight either way. Free fix: finally change that default admin password you never touched.

Ray-Ban's out, Kylie's in: Meta ditched the Ray-Ban name and slapped its own on your face. Say hello to the Adventurer and Fury smart glasses at $299, about $80 less than last year's Ray-Ban Meta pair. There's also a $399 Starfire edition with Kylie Jenner, with an AI assistant that talks in her voice and a mirror in the case. All three pack a camera, live translation in 20 languages and walking directions. Meta already owns roughly 80% of this market. In hindsight, that's quite the spectacle.

🧾 Tax records don’t get a do-over: The IRS doesn’t care that your cloud sync glitched or your hard drive had a bad day. Lose your tax records or business files, and you are looking at a legal nightmare. I use Carbonite because it’s a separate, encrypted vault that runs automatically and has nothing to do with whatever chaos is happening on your main system. Your photos are irreplaceable. Your documents are legally required. Start with 50% off today.* 

ID, Robot: Anthropic, the company behind Claude, tweaked its privacy policy so Claude can ask folks to prove their age and identity. We’re talking a photo of your passport or driver’s license, plus a selfie and a face scan. Before you panic at what’s spreading on tech blogs and social media, it targets flagged accounts that are appealing a fraud block, not everyone, and starts July 8. Relax.

🏚️ Art sold separately: Great, now apartment listings are catfishing people, too. There’s a real estate trick going around: agencies using hyperrealistic AI virtual staging in online listings to make dumpy apartments look like sunlit boutique hotels. Hardwood floors, elegant furniture, giant windows, all fake. Buyers then show up and meet beige walls, sad carpet and landlord-grade lighting. Traditional staging can cost thousands, AI can be dollars per image, which explains the temptation. When you’re shopping for a home, show up in person. 

🧬 Botside manner: Picture being a parent with binders full of tests, years of appointments and no clean answer for why your kid is sick. Then an AI strolls in, metaphorically wearing a tiny white coat, and helps diagnose 18 rare childhood diseases doctors couldn’t crack. This is the version of AI we should all be rooting for. Less fake influencer and voice scams. More medical bloodhound. If it saves families years of guessing, hand the chatbot a stethoscope please. 

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Important email, terrible timing? In Gmail, right-click the message and choose Snooze. It disappears, then pops back up when you actually have time: tomorrow morning, next week or a custom date. Need it sooner? Open Snoozed on the left. Your inbox just learned patience.

Running out of iCloud space? Don’t pay for more until you know what’s eating it. Open Settings > Apple Account > iCloud. Tap the storage bar at the top for a breakdown. Photos may be the main culprit, but check Backups, too. Delete old phones you no longer use. Don’t delete your current one, obviously.

🗑️ Recycle Bin weirdness: Windows has a strange bug after the June 2026 update. When you permanently delete one file from the Recycle Bin, the confirmation box may show a random-looking name like $Rxxxxx.jpg instead of “vacation photo.jpg.” Don’t panic. It’s still your selected file, not malware. Just Windows being Windows. A fix is coming.

Hanging on to old Apple tech? This fall, 16 devices lose software support. They won’t die overnight, but new features are off the table, and security updates may dry up soon. The list includes newer-ish watches like Series 8 and the first Apple Watch Ultra, older iPads, Intel Macs and some Apple TVs. Prime Day upgrade, anyone?

🎨 Paint like Picasso, sort of: Google has a cute abstract art game you can try in your browser, no sign-in or download needed. You paint by dragging little sea creatures around the screen. The twist? They’re your brushes and tiny art critics, reacting as you go with jokes, comments and art tidbits. Bored kid? Hand it over. Enjoy 5 mins of peace. 

Be on the show! Got a wild tech story you’re telling all your friends about? We want to know, too! Send it my way here. I’ll read it. You might get a call from one of my producers. We can chat on air. 

Remember that phrase? 

Just when you thought the internet had run out of weird historical reboots, a trend called Nixonmaxxing is turning one of America’s famous political bad reputations into a brooding online antihero. 

Backed by the Richard Nixon Foundation, it’s like watching a PR team perform CPR on a presidential legacy, posting slick videos that pair old Nixon footage with rap music, Don Draper clips and enough cinematic slow motion to make him look less like a president and more like a YouTube motivational speaker. 

You’ve got to see it in action with music.

Share this now:

🔜 Tomorrow: You press the button, you feel better, and the system ignores you completely. I’ll break down the everyday buttons that exist mostly to manage your mood. You’ll never click the same way again.

Tomorrow’s trivia looks at the tiny algorithmic nudge behind your next couch-rotting binge.

The answer: C) about 180 million. Yep. Roughly 180 million Americans pay for Amazon Prime. More homes than any cable TV package ever reached at its peak.

That’s more than half the country paying $139 a year for faster shipping, streaming and the ability to order kitchen scissors at midnight like it’s a medical emergency.

🛍️ And these folks shop: U.S. customers place an estimated 8.4 million Amazon orders every single day. Amazon stopped officially announcing Prime numbers back in 2020, so researchers do the counting now, and they put the figure right around 180 million and still climbing. Half the country, one little smile logo.

What do you call two monkeys who split an Amazon account? Prime mates. (Why are you shaking your head?)

Here’s today in a nutshell. A company you’ve never heard of holds a 3,000-point file on you and sells your whole life for less than a stick of gum, and Incogni can claw it back. Your dusty old router might be moonlighting for criminals, so reboot it and change that default password tonight. And your watch can catch a fall or a missing pulse and call for help before you can. Google has a game to entertain the kids, too. Not a bad haul for a Wednesday.

🍏 Worth a second look: The Apple Watch Series 11 just dropped to $279 (30% off). The cellular version is only $100 more. It tracks your sleep, monitors your health and keeps you connected without your phone nearby. Lock it in before it sells out. I wear this watch every day.

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.

Have questions? Ask me here.

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, ROVE, Apple, @nixonfoundation via Instagram

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.