😱 Your face in the church’s database

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🤯 WOW! The Media Nuns of Boston have more than 150K online followers (one convent video hit 3.4M views), and their order’s been using the newest media since 1915, from printing presses to TikTok. Monks in Wyoming fund their monastery by selling coffee online. The most offline people are online, and they’re better at it than we are.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

Picture America’s most chronically online job: making TikToks for a living. Now picture who’s behind the camera. A Catholic sister in a full habit, filming between prayers in a Boston convent.

Meet the Daughters of St. Paul, aka the Media Nuns. Sister Bethany has more than 198,000 TikTok followers. One video of the sisters answering rapid-fire questions pulled 3.4 million views. 

They dance, lip-sync, answer the questions everyone’s afraid to ask a nun. The comments are full of people who haven’t set foot in a church in years.

This isn’t a modern stunt.

The order was founded in 1915 with one mission: Spread the message using the fastest media of the age. In 1915, that meant printing presses. Then radio. Then paperbacks. Today, it means a ring light and a trending sound.

Sister Monica Clare, who leads an Episcopal community in New Jersey, has 234,000 followers of her own. Her reasoning: “If we’re hidden, we’re going to die out.”

Deep in the Wyoming mountains, Carmelite monks fund their monastery by roasting Mystic Monk Coffee. You can order it online to be shipped to your door. Sites like Monastery Greetings are basically Amazon for the abbey set: fruitcake from Missouri monks, caramels from Trappistine nuns, soaps, honey, hot sauce. 

Hours of silence in the chapel. A checkout cart in the cloud. The candle business moved online, and nobody upstairs seems to mind. Silent prayer, loud espresso machine. Somebody’s up early either way.

These are the most intentional tech users I’ve ever seen. The sisters post, then put the phone down for hours of prayer, meals together, actual silence. The tech serves the mission, never the other way around. No doomscrolling. No checking likes at dinner.

Most of us let our phones decide what we care about. These devoted men and women found the answer to the question we’re all fumbling with: how to live in the feed without letting the feed live in you. And they get engagement rates most influencers would pray for. 

🎯 Forward this to someone who swears social media rots your soul. Exceptions exist.

A man’s Meta smart glasses caught his attackers’ faces during a terrifying heist. Two people were arrested. Those same glasses are getting banned at several businesses.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚔️ Cyberwar gets outsourced: This is pretty crazy. The government is giving private cybersecurity firms permission to strike foreign hackers. The U.S. plans to license a small group of vetted companies for hack-back operations against ransomware crews and state-backed criminals. That could help a hospital, school, bank or utility recover faster. It also raises one ugly question: When a contractor hits the wrong target, who pays? Basically, the help desk has been authorized to return fire.

🖥️ Your hard drive is going to crash: Not might. Not someday maybe. Will. The average hard drive lasts three to five years. Yours is probably older than that. When it goes, recovery costs $300 to $3,000, if the data is salvageable at all. I use Carbonite to back up everything automatically, every photo, every document, every file, without thinking about it. Get 50% off Carbonite today.*

🍿 Apple TV just unlocked a shelf of free classic movies: Subscribers are getting a batch of classic films at no extra charge, a quiet perk in a streaming world where everything costs more every year. Open the Apple TV app and look for the new free row before it rotates out. FYI, "free with subscription" still beats "another $7.99 add-on." Enjoy something old without paying something new. Popcorn's on you, though.

🚗 Ever wonder if police cameras have scanned YOUR plates? Now you can check: Have I Been Flocked (haveibeenflocked.com) searches 241 million logged police lookups from Flock's license plate readers, the 120,000-plus cameras quietly watching America's roads. Type in your plate and see if law enforcement ran it, the site says it never stores what you enter. The data's from public records, so it's incomplete. Still. You've been driving through a lineup this whole time.

⏱️ Three minutes matter: Your nearest staircase may be the cheapest health upgrade nobody is trying to sell you. Researchers analyzed activity from 59,218 adults, then followed medical records for about eight years. Replacing sitting with any movement was associated with lower risk for 13 inactivity-linked cancers (paywall link). A brisk three-minute burst performed like 90 minutes of light movement, while 30 minutes of standing roughly matched 15 minutes of strolling. No gym, no guilt, move when life gives you a minute. 

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Ever feel like answering something in a Facebook group without putting your name on it? Tap Comment, then your profile icon beside the box and choose Comment on this post as an anonymous member. Want to ask something instead? Tap your profile icon next to Write something. Others won’t see your name, but admins will. So behave.

Passkey pickpocket alert: You know how opening your bank app with your face feels futuristic and secure? Here’s a jump scare. Researchers showed a “Pass-ta-key” attack where malware already sitting on a Windows PC can hijack the passkeys, stored in Google Password Manager, take over accounts and even yank out the secret keys. Don’t panic. NordPass sidesteps the Google Password Manager attack by keeping passkeys in its encrypted, zero-knowledge vault, though malware loose on your PC is still bad news. Get 55% off, only $1.34 a month.*

💻 Chrome eats RAM alive: Yeah, it’s not exactly built for a potato laptop. But you can optimize it a bit. Click three dots > Settings > Performance and turn on Memory Saver. Chrome puts unused tabs to sleep and gives some RAM back. And yes, those five ChatGPT tabs you swear you need might be part of the problem.

🎓 Apple gave you more time: Looking for a Mac or iPad for school? Apple extended its back-to-school deal through Sept. 24, so no need to panic buy. The promo gives students and teachers an educational discount and a gift card. Like $150 with a MacBook Pro or $100 with a MacBook Air or iPad. On a tighter budget? There’s always Amazon Renewed.

😅 X remembers everything: ICYDK, your posts are public by default, so even people without an X account can see them. Go to Settings > Privacy and safety > Audience and tagging, then turn on Protect your posts. New followers have to ask permission, and only approved ones can see what you post. Opinions from five years ago? Maybe keep those in the family. 🤐

🐾 Dinner without the guilt trip: Running late? An automatic feeder can drop premeasured meals on schedule, so your cat or small dog isn’t staring at the door, plotting revenge. I found one for $52 with wired or battery power, plus a voice recording to call them over. Not a full-time replacement but handy in a pinch. Bigger doggo? There’s an all-they-can-eat version, too. 🤭

🩹 Windows users, one more patch before the weekend’s over: Microsoft just fixed "LegacyHive," a Windows zero-day that slipped out after last month's Patch Tuesday. A zero-day means the bad guys knew about the hole before the fix existed, so this isn't optional. Hit Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates, install, restart. Yes, again, right after last week's 400-flaw monster. Think of it like flossing: annoying, constant, and much cheaper than the alternative.

Your TV would like to know less about you. Revolutionary stuff.

Westinghouse’s new 32-inch non-smart TV costs $150 and skips the apps, accounts and built-in streaming circus entirely. You still get HDMI, USB and VGA, so Roku, Apple TV, game consoles and antennas work.

Our living rooms could use a digital detox. In surveys, 81% of Americans say smart-TV data collection concerns them.

Turns out the hottest TV feature of 2026 is minding its own business. BTW, the National Origami Championship airs on paper view.

Check the TV out here. 

Share this now:

🎓 What you learned today: Nuns and monks are some of the most disciplined tech users on the internet, the U.S. is about to let vetted security firms hack the hackers back, a free site shows whether police cameras scanned your license plate, three brisk minutes of movement can perform like 90 of light activity, and the hottest TV feature of 2026 is a TV that can't spy on you. Not bad for one email. Grocery and retail apps may be using your data to decide what YOU pay. Tomorrow, I'll show you how surveillance pricing works and how to catch it before checkout.

💸 The answer: C) Tracking who attends and who to ask for donations. Churches use facial recognition to see who shows up most often and who’s been missing so they can follow up. Face-Six CEO Moshe Greenshpan wouldn’t say whether congregations tell members they are being scanned, and his clients declined to be named because they didn’t want to be called privacy invaders. Shameful. This crosses the line big-time.  

Only three states have stand-alone biometric privacy laws: Illinois, Texas and Washington. Illinois is the only one where you personally can sue, up to $1,000 for a careless violation and $5,000 for a deliberate one. Everywhere else, it’s the attorney general’s job, if anyone gets around to it. About 20 other states fold face data into broader privacy laws, but that’s a slower road.

🔑 Three questions to ask this Sunday.

A gentleman slid into my row last Sunday and asked, “Is this seat saved?” I said, “Not yet. I’m praying for it.” He didn’t laugh. And somewhere in the back, a camera got the whole thing on file.

🤳 Get this. Every time your phone pings with a junk text or a "bank alert" scam, a data broker just made a nickel. They’re selling your cell number to anyone with a credit card. It’s annoying, it’s constant, and it needs to stop. I don’t have time to chase 400 brokers. This is what I use: Get 60% off Incogni right now.*

📺 Tired of scrolling for something worth watching? Head to my YouTube channel! It’s packed with smart tips, real laughs and tech talk that actually matters. Click here and enjoy screen time that’s finally worth it.

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/Sister Bethany/Mystic Monk Coffee/Monastery Greetings, PopSockets, HOTO, Westinghouse Store via Amazon

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