💰 Your bank is lying

It’s a great Tuesday, {{first_name | friend}}. We’re living in wild times. AI that can think on its own, drone food deliveries and self-driving cars. Can you believe that a staggering number of people still aren’t on the internet? Not even dial-up, if you can remember that wonderful sound. 

🌎 As of 2026, how many people on Earth do not have internet access? A) 500 million, B) 1.1 billion, C) 2.2 billion or D) 3.8 billion? Stay connected, answer’s at the end.

🎟️ Scroll up. See a red box at the top of this newsletter? You just won $250. I'm giving it away every single day this month. No red box today? You've still got 25 more chances. Now let's get into the tech smarts you can use to impress your family and friends. — Kim

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⚡ TL;DR (THE SHORT VERSION)

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

When was the last time you walked into an actual bank? Stood in line behind someone depositing 47 rolls of quarters? Yeah, me neither. 

Online banking is fast, easy and available at 2 a.m. when you bolt awake remembering you forgot to pay the electric bill. But convenience always comes with trade-offs. Here’s what you need to know.

Online banks like Ally, Marcus and SoFi offer significantly higher interest rates than the big guys. I’m talking 100 to 400 times higher because they’re not paying for marble lobbies and expensive locations.

Most have zero monthly fees and no minimum balance requirements. Some have killed overdraft charges entirely. 

ATM fees? Many reimburse up to $10 or $15 a month or give you access to free networks like Allpoint with 55,000 machines nationwide. Be sure you read the fine print on that though.

Look for FDIC insurance. Your deposits are protected up to $250,000 per account, same as the big banks. 

Not sure if an online bank is real? Use the FDIC’s BankFind tool to verify before you hand over a dime. Not in the database? Run.

Pro tip: You don’t have to go all in. Plenty of people, including me, keep a checking account at a local physical bank for cash deposits and human help, then stash savings at a high-yield online bank. Best of both worlds.

No branches means no human help when things go sideways. Account frozen? Hacked? You’re stuck on hold with a call center reading scripts while your blood pressure spikes.

Cash deposits are a headache. Most online banks don’t take them, so Grandma’s birthday money becomes a whole project involving money orders. Large checks can be a problem, too. 

Some online banks cap mobile deposits at $2,000 or $5,000 per day. That insurance payout a teller would handle in 30 seconds? Could take you a week. Wire transfers can sting with fees, so check before you send.

Online banking is only as safe as you make it. Here’s my list for you to follow.

Online banking isn’t going anywhere. Make sure your money doesn’t either. I have an addiction to having lots of money in my bank account. Unfortunately, I’m suffering from withdrawals.

📣 Share this: Know someone still earning 0.01% interest at a big bank? They’re literally giving money away. Share this, so they can stop leaving cash on the table and actually make their savings work for them. Use the icons below.

Your smart speaker is listening. You didn’t know. I cover why Google paid $68 million to settle eavesdropping claims. Then I talk to Aaron, a student from Baton Rouge who turned in his final paper and got flagged for AI cheating, even though he didn’t use AI. Plus, how one island got rich from the .ai domain boom and the AirTag 2 launch.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

💰 Christmas money boomerang: If I saw $1,033,000 randomly hit my bank account on Christmas Eve, I’d assume it was either a miracle or a felony. But this deposit’s real. Vermont retiree Jeanette Voss, 71, lost nearly $950,000 in a tech-support scam in 2021, then lived on Social Security and food stamps for years. Secret Service agents tracked the crypto wallets, cracked an international ring and sent the funds back, with interest. The scammers? They got coal. Federal prison coal.

Bot scapegoat: Move over, economic headwinds. AI is taking the blame in more and more layoff emails. Companies are AI-washing layoffs to make them sound inevitable and less awkward. In 2025, AI got name-dropped in 50,000+ layoffs (paywall link), and the trend continues. Amazon just trimmed 16,000 more corporate roles after 14,000 in the fall, while other big companies follow suit.

💼 Hiring the wrong person is expensive. It costs you time, money and morale. You can’t afford to guess. I trust LinkedIn Hiring Pro to find candidates who actually match the job description. It cuts through the noise, so you only see the people who are ready to work. Get $100 off your first job post right now.*

NSFW engagement engine: Remember when xAI’s Grok was undressing and putting everyone in provocative, skimpy swimsuits? Former employees say that wasn’t random. It ramped up after Musk started obsessing over user active seconds, basically how long you’ll keep chatting. xAI loosened guardrails, shipped sexy AI companions and trained staff to handle explicit content. The result: Grok became an undressing machine that drew investigations all over the world.

🫥 Invisible password button: Nothing like firing up your PC and realizing Windows hid the password like it’s a teenager’s vape. Since August 2025, some Windows 11 updates made the password sign-in option invisible on some machines. If you have to hover over empty space like you’re summoning a spirit to see the hidden password box, the Jan. 29 optional update KB5074105 fixes it. Go to Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates.

Fountain fee: Rome started charging for the Trevi Fountain. You can still see it for free from the square, but if you want that classic selfie without 800 elbows, you have to pay to enter the basin gated area. Costs about $2.38. It could bring in about $7.1M a year. Classic history freemium model. The Pantheon began charging in 2023, and Venice added peak fees. I already paid the fee, it’s in the fountain!

🐶 Foster famous: You’ll like this one. Brooklyn creator Isabel Klee got laid off right before turning 30 and, instead of melting down, started posting foster dogs as @SimonSits. Her first journey video with Ken, a heeler mix, hit 257,000 views, and her phone vibrated for a week. Since then, she’s fostered nearly 30 dogs, raised $500,000+ for animal charities and passed 2M followers. She has deals with Toyota and Chewy and even a memoir coming: Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About. Proof that sometimes getting laid off is life throwing you a bone.

The newest scam hitting America isn’t coming from Russia or China. This one’s homegrown.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Don’t forget you can reply to messages hands-free when you can’t reach your phone. On iPhone, say, “Hey, Siri,” then something like “Send a message to Kim saying, how about tomorrow?” or “Reply, that’s good news.” On Android, say, “Hey, Google,” followed by “Send a WhatsApp message to Brian, 1 p.m. works for me.”

Root out suspicious apps: You can check how often apps use your location, camera and microphone in the background. On iPhone, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > App Privacy Report. On Android, open Settings > Security and privacy > Permissions usage. If anything looks weird, remove the app or turn off that permission.

🎥 Convert notes into AI videos on your phone: Reading long pages of text on a small screen sucks. The NotebookLM app can turn your documents into short videos that explain the main points to you. Upload a file, and it creates narrated visuals with slides, highlights and diagrams. Try it out: Studio tab > Video Overviews.

Turn your thermostat into wall art: Have a Nest Learning Thermostat 4th gen? Google added new botanical faces that change with the seasons. From far away, it shows animated fruits and flowers. As you get closer, it switches to useful info like temperature and weather. On your thermostat, go to Settings > Farsight and choose the face you want.

Wrong-time Roomba? If your robot likes cleaning during weekly meetings, set Do Not Disturb hours, so it stays quiet. Open the iRobot Home app, tap Schedule > Do Not Disturb. Add the day, a start and end time, then hit Save. FYI, you can override it anytime with a voice command or by pressing the robot’s physical Clean button.

Forget pushing a cart. MOBI pushes itself because maneuvering your own basket is apparently beneath us now. 

This 66-pound-hauling robot sidekick follows you through stores with obstacle avoidance, remote control and two folding cooler bins. It’s a concept for now. Because nothing says the future like keeping your factory-farmed salmon cool in a robot.

It charges in your trunk, runs for four hours and even has a remote if you want to feel powerful. All it’s missing is a toddler grabbing colorful chip bags off the shelves.

🥖 One for my engineers: A wife sends her engineer husband to the grocery store for a loaf of bread. On his way out, she says, “And if they have eggs, get a dozen.” The husband returns home with 12 loaves of bread.

🔜 Tomorrow: If you’ve walked past a Ring doorbell in the last six months, there’s a decent chance Amazon has your faceprint sitting in a database. You never signed up for this. Your neighbor did, and you’re just collateral data. I’ll explain why wearing a hat is now a privacy strategy.

💰 Look for a red box at the top of tomorrow's newsletter. That means you won $250. One subscriber wins every day this month.

🌐 The answer: C) 2.2 billion people are still offline in 2026. That’s right, nearly one-third of humanity doesn’t DM, google or binge-watch Game of Thrones. Most live in Southern Asia and Africa, highlighting a digital divide that’s more Grand Canyon than crack in the sidewalk.

💸 Meanwhile, those with internet access are dropping an average of $1,127 a year online, mostly on things we’ll forget we ordered until the box shows up. Oh, and if the global internet were a country, some folks say its economy would be the fifth largest in the world.

I wanted to supply an economic dad joke. But, there is no demand right now.

👉 Progress over perfection, always. Done is better than flawless. — Kim

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

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