📱 Your doorbell’s secret

Hey hey, it’s Tuesday, {{first_name | friend}}. Picture this. A college athlete jumps into a lake at a summer camp and hits the water wrong. He’s paralyzed from the shoulders down. Eight years later, a chip gets implanted in his brain. Then after surgery, he’s moving a computer cursor, playing games and writing with only his thoughts. That’s not a movie trailer. Meet Noland Arbaugh, the first human to receive a Neuralink brain implant.

🧠 How fast did the implant work? A) Weeks of training, B) About a day, C) Mere minutes or D) It still doesn’t work. The answer’s at the end of today’s newsletter. 

I’m giving away $250 every day this month. Every. Single. Day. If there’s a big red box at the top of this email with your unique claim number, that money’s yours. No red box today? Tomorrow’s another shot. Keep opening.

💥 Do your knees pop when you stand up? It’s not just aging. It is your body running out of collagen. Your natural supply drops fast after age 30. I rely on NativePath to keep my joints cushioned and my hair thick. It dissolves in my tea with zero taste. Get up to 44% off, free shipping, plus free gifts. More below.** — Kim

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⚡ TL;DR (THE SHORT VERSION)

📖 Read time: 3.5 minutes

If you watched the big game on Sunday, you probably saw the Ring ad. A family loses their dog Milo, the neighborhood Ring cameras spot him and everyone’s crying happy tears on the couch. Great ad. I almost reached for the tissues myself.

It’s called Search Party. Your dog gets out, you report it in the Ring app and AI scans nearby outdoor Ring cameras for a match. A neighbor’s camera spots your pup, they get an alert and they choose whether to share the clip with you. Amazon says it’s reunited 99 dogs with their families in 90 days.

Ring cameras help catch criminals every day. Porch pirates, car break-ins, home burglaries. I’m not anti-camera. I have them all over my house, patios and yard. I also have license plate readers around my property.

But there’s a big difference between choosing to share a clip with police and not knowing your doorbell is part of a national surveillance grid.

Search Party runs on Amazon Sidewalk, a wireless network connecting millions of Ring cameras and Echo devices. Amazon turned it on by default. Most people have no idea they’re part of it.

In December 2025, Ring launched Familiar Faces. That’s facial recognition on your doorbell. It flags strangers and learns who belongs at your door.

Back in October 2025, Ring partnered with Flock. They run AI cameras in over 5,000 communities and scan billions of license plates every month. Police using Flock can request your Ring footage through the app. No formal contracts. Just quiet access through departments in the system.

Ring says sharing is voluntary. And it is. But most people don’t even know the ask is coming.

You deserve to know what your doorbell is doing. Here’s where to look and the trade-offs for each.

No wrong answer here. Just make sure it’s your answer. Talk about getting more than you rang up for.

🚔 Got a Ring doorbell? Have you ever gotten a police footage request through the app? I want to know what you did. 

📤 Know someone who saw that Ring ad Sunday and thought, How sweet? Forward this, so they get the full story and can check their own settings.

Bethany woke up covered in red spots and asked ChatGPT. The AI insisted she go to the ER immediately. It’s a warning that saved her life. Hear what the bot got right and wrong.

Plus, a whistleblower gives WIRED’s Andy Greenberg a terrifying look inside a Southeast Asian scam center, your Wi-Fi can see through walls and your smart speaker knows what you’re feeling.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

💓 The third wheel: You won’t believe this. In a poll of about 100,000 U.S. college students, 35% admit they’ve checked their phone during quality time with their partners. Only for emergencies, right? Nope, to text or scroll during sex. Yeah, like they’re waiting at a dentist’s office. I’m not ready to say romance is dead, but it might need airplane mode to survive.

AI meets skull: Call me crazy, but sinus surgery should be boring. The FDA got 100+ reports of trouble after Johnson & Johnson put AI in its surgical GPS. At least 10 people were hurt, injuries including spinal fluid leaking from a nose and two alleged strokes. The company says there’s no credible proof it was the AI. C’mon.

🚩 Half-million red flags: Ever wonder what it takes for Big Tech to look genuinely nervous? Right before jury trial, a judge unsealed a 2020 internal email from a Meta child-safety staffer to higher-ups. She warned of creeps targeting up to 500,000 kids a day with sexually inappropriate messages in English markets alone. It could be worse than that. Investigators say test accounts got explicit content and even a six-figure porn offer. It’ll be in a jury’s hands soon enough. 

Low-key level-up: Apple’s dropping a new budget iPhone any day now, aka the iPhone 17e. Same $599 price, but this one packs the A19 chip, MagSafe charging and some in-house wireless and cellular hardware. There probably won’t be a line wrapping around the block for it. But if you’re rocking an older phone that’s not getting updates (hi, iPhone 8 crew), this could be your ticket to avoiding a thousand-dollar upgrade.

🕰️ Google’s 100-year IOU: AI is a money furnace, and Google’s parent company says it may spend $185B this year building data centers and AI. So Alphabet is borrowing like it’s doing a whole home renovation. The goal? Raise about $15B (paywall link) by selling bonds in the U.S., and they’re also flirting with selling a 100‑year bond in British pounds. Imagine what future AI minds will think when the tech powering their grandparents is finally paid off.

🛻 Just a guy: Waymo told Congress its autonomous robotaxis still phone a friend when things get tricky, sometimes calling long-distance to the Philippines. Tesla does it, too. The agents aren’t full joystick puppet masters, though. They help out when the car’s confused, but the vehicle still drives itself. It’s less Knight Rider, more calling your dad when you’re lost. Somewhere in Manila, a guy is helping a car in Phoenix do an illegal U-turn. 

The AirTag 2 is here, but hold your wallet. Try this $1 hack to make your old tracker good as new.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Your phone’s voice assistant can do way more than answer questions. Try this tonight. Walk into a dark room and say, “Hey, Siri, turn on the flashlight” or “Hey, Google, turn on the flashlight.” No tapping, no swiping, no bumping into furniture. It also works for turning Wi-Fi on and off or switching to mobile data. Not working? Check Settings > Siri > Talk to Siri on iPhone or Google app > Settings > Gemini > Talk to Gemini hands-free on Android.

😏 Their iPhone, your inbox: Kids are smart and will try to delete texts before you see them. What they don’t know is that if they’re using the same Apple ID as you, their messages can still show up on your device, even if they delete them. Open Settings > Apps > Messages > Text Message Forwarding to turn it on. You’re welcome.

Your speaker knows you’re stressed: Alexa and Google have patented tech that can analyze the tone of your voice. The scan gets uploaded to the cloud, and who knows how it’s used? Quick, open the Alexa app > More > Alexa Privacy and disable Help Improve Alexa (also delete Voice History). For Google, go to myaccount.google.com > Data & privacy and turn off voice & audio activity. Don’t let your speaker become the psychoanalyst you never asked for.

🛑 Why your internet lags at night: You sit down to stream a movie, and suddenly it buffers. That is often your ISP throttling your speed because you are using “too much” data. It’s unfair. I use ExpressVPN to hide my activity. If they can’t see you are streaming, they won’t slow you down. Stop the lag and get 4 extra months.*

Your screenshots are tattletales: Every photo your phone takes stores hidden data called EXIF. That includes the exact GPS location, date, time and even what device you used. Share a photo from your home and someone can pinpoint your address. On iPhone, open a photo, tap the info (i) button, then tap Adjust under the map and select No Location. On Android, open the photo in Google Photos, tap the three dots > Edit > Location > Remove location. Note: Depending on your make and model, the steps may be a tad different.

📵 Hands off: States are cracking down on phone use behind the wheel. Simply holding your phone or even resting it on your lap would be outlawed under bills Florida’s considering, and 30+ other states have hands-free laws. Get a dash mount to keep your phone in view while your hands stay on the wheel. Your life is too important to risk it by fumbling with a phone while driving, and staying out of jail is nice, too.

For $190,000, you can cruise at 62 mph hovering 200 feet above your neighbors and whatever unresolved HOA drama is happening below you.

Helix is a one-person electric aircraft that takes off vertically, flies for 30 minutes and lands anywhere with about 100 feet of clearance. Charging takes 75 minutes, which is still faster than most people will emotionally recover from watching you take off from your backyard.

No pilot’s license required. Just training and an FAA knowledge test. So basically the same barrier to entry as a jet ski but you’re 200 feet in the air. Sounds totally safe.

🔜 Tomorrow: Spring break flight prices are at their lowest right now. But scammers know you’re shopping. I’ll show you how to lock in the best deals and spot the fake cruise offers fooling people left and right. Don’t book a thing until you read tomorrow’s newsletter.

Some of you have won $250 and don’t even know it. Scroll to the top of this email and look for the big red box. If it’s not there, tomorrow’s another shot. But check your past emails, too. We’ve got unclaimed prizes. Enter your email here to see if one of them is yours.

🕐 The answer: C) Minutes. It took Noland Arbaugh mere minutes after surgery to mind-control the computer cursor. That’s right, thinking = clicking. No hands required.

Since then, Noland’s used Neuralink to play chess, crush video games and start learning French and Japanese. Je suis impressed! As of late last year, 21 people across four countries are literally thinking their way through screens.

I interviewed Noland last year, and trust me, this isn’t some sci-fi clickbait headline. It’s an amazing human story, and you’re hearing it straight from him. 

❣️ Eight years between the worst day of his life and the best. That’s a pretty good reminder that your story isn’t over yet. 

👍 Until next time, remember Big Tech has billion-dollar marketing budgets. You’ve got me. I like our odds. — Kim

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

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Photo credit(s): Gemini, Evoloop, Pivotal

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