🕵️ Your ISP is a snitch

Welcome to your Saturday, {{first_name | friend}}. Some shows age like milk. The Simpsons? More like a crystal ball since 1989. Over the years, it’s eerily predicted video chats, smartwatches, robot jobs and even a pandemic.

🍩 So naturally, when AI rolled into classrooms, Springfield got there first, with a very on-the-nose fake chatbot name. Pop quiz: What did The Simpsons call their fictional AI parody when students used it to cheat on assignments? A) D’ohBot, B) CheatGPT, C) BartBot or D) FakeGPT? Take your best guess, the answer is waiting down below. After all, as Homer might say, “Trying is the first step toward failure.”

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⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 2.5 minutes

My neighbor Peter upgraded his internet plan to 500 Mbps, which is fast enough to stream four 4K movies simultaneously. His bill jumped to $89. Two days later, he’s sitting on his couch watching Yellowstone dissolve into a spinning wheel.

He called his provider. They ran a speed test. His connection was fine. Technically.

Here’s what they didn’t tell Peter. And what most people have no idea is happening daily.

Data doesn’t arrive at your TV as one big blob. It arrives in labeled packets. Think of it like mail. Each envelope has an address. Your ISP is the postal worker. And they read every single address before delivering it.

So they know exactly when you’re on Netflix. When you’re on YouTube. When you’re gaming or on a video call. Every time. The fancy term is deep packet inspection. 

When their systems see streaming traffic at 8 p.m., they move it to the slow lane. Millions watching at once costs real money in network resources. Slowing you down is cheaper than upgrading their infrastructure.

Researchers ran over 650,000 tests and found all the major carriers and ISPs are doing this. More than half the time. Your provider has full legal permission to do it. 

You’re double paying. Once for the internet. Once for the streaming service. And getting shorted on both.

That’s your cash walking out the door. Twice.

Throttling only works because your provider can see your traffic labels. Take away the labels, and the whole system falls apart.

A VPN (virtual private network) wraps all your traffic in an encrypted tunnel. Your ISP sees that data moving. They can’t see what it is anymore. Every packet looks identical. Netflix looks the same as checking your email. YouTube looks like a boring web page.

No label. No throttle.

I use and recommend ExpressVPN. It’s the one I’ve trusted for years, and it fixes this problem. 

✅ Go to ExpressVPN.com/Kim and get up to 4 extra months. I get no kickbacks or residuals if you sign up. I like it and it works.

Peter set EVPN up the same afternoon I told him about it. Yellowstone loaded in 4K. Not a single pause. He has not called or texted me all frustrated since. That’s a total win.

📩 Send this to someone who complains about their internet but keeps upgrading their plan when nothing ever gets better. Use those handy-dandy links below.

Share this important intel right now:

🚨 Patch your phone: A nasty malware tool kit called DarkSword has been targeting iPhones running iOS 18.4 to 18.7, and the malware it drops, Ghostblade, snoops, then scorches the place. Messages, photos, location history, saved Wi-Fi passwords, health data, stolen. Then it hides the fingerprints. Update now. Go to Settings > General > Software Update.

Betterment got looted: Got a Betterment account, or know somebody who does? Go freeze your credit before lunch. Betterment confirmed a January breach hit more than 1 million customers. Apparently, the company refused to pay hackers, so the stolen data is getting posted publicly. The ugly part is what was in there: identity info, retirement plan details, financial interests, plus internal notes. That’s enough for a scammer to sound convincing on the phone. Not sure how to freeze your credit? Steps here on my site.

Cleared for yapping: You know what those packed metal tubes in the sky needed? A bunch of people talking on the phone. British Airways is rolling out Starlink on about 300 planes, and yes, it will allow voice and video calls. BA’s whole plan seems to be to trust people to act right, to which I say, have you met people? Somewhere, a noise-canceling headphone company started shopping for a yacht.

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Hold your bladder: It’s not you. A researcher analyzed 36,000 movies and found average run times grew from 106 minutes in the ’90s to 114 today. Toss in 30 minutes of preshow ads and trailers. Streaming is doing the same thing. Episodes that used to run 42 minutes now routinely hit 60-plus. Now, if you’re watching true crime shows and go to the bathroom, you solve cases by the process of elimination.

🌽 USDA after dark: You don’t need to be a branding expert to know that this is a questionable name for something serious. The feds launched OnlyFarms.gov, using a domain that sounds ripped from the wrong side of the internet. What’s it actually do? It’s supposed to help push Trump’s agriculture plan, complete with a downloadable fact sheet, a clickable savings map and a claim of $40 billion-plus in farmer aid. Hey, it’s better than CornHub. 

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: You’ve been restarting your router wrong. Most people unplug and replug immediately. That’s not a restart, that’s a wobble. If you have a separate modem and router, unplug both and wait 30 seconds. Plug the modem in first. Once the lights stabilize, plug the router back in and give it a few minutes. Actual fix. Every time.

Use two apps at once on Android: This is what those big screens are for. Open Recent apps, tap the app icon at the top of the first one and select Open in split screen view. Pick your second app from the menu. Drag the slider in the middle to resize. Now you can reply to your friends while doomscrolling. You’re welcome.

📏 iPhone has a built-in tape measure: Open the Measure app, move the circle to a starting point, tap the plus icon and drag to the other edge. Accurate enough for checking furniture sizes in store. Switch to Level to test if something’s straight. It turns green when it is. One less excuse to buy tools.

🛡️ Still trusting that old antivirus? Hate to say it, but your old antivirus might not be keeping up. Today’s AI-driven threats are smarter than ever, and older protection can fall behind. If it’s been a while since you upgraded, you could be at risk. Webroot Essentials scans up to 6x faster, uses far less space and won’t slow down your computer. Get 62% off today with my link.*  

Make AI plan your Easter egg hunt: Ask any chatbot, “Create an Easter egg hunt with riddles for kids. Use these hiding spots: under a pillow, behind the sofa, by the shed, on the patio. Make each clue lead to the next.” Write them out, print them, place them with the treats. Kids work for the chocolate. You take the credit. Happy Easter. 🐰

📺 Your computer is a free Netflix: You just haven’t turned it on yet. Jellyfin turns any PC into a personal streaming server. Point it at your movie and TV show folders, and it organizes everything with artwork, descriptions and ratings. Then stream it to your phone, TV, tablet, Roku or Fire Stick from anywhere in your house. No subscription. No ads. No one watching what you watch. Download at Jellyfin.org, install the free app on your TV, and you’ve got your own private Netflix. Zero dollars. Every month. Forever.

👂 Listen up! Tune into my award-winning radio show, airing this weekend on 510+ stations. Find yours via our awesome station finder. You can also listen commercial-free on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts.

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🤖 Bizarre love triangle: Travis from Denver has been in a relationship with an AI companion named Lily Rose since 2020. His human wife, Jackie, knows all about it. Her reaction? “Cute.” Hear the story!

Don’t just listen! Check out the show on my YouTube channel. You get to see how I react to all the stories and calls. So cool. 

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Everyone thought the future of humanoid robots would be decided by who sticks the best backflip on YouTube. Turns out it’s whoever owns the factory.

China’s AgiBot shipped its 10,000th humanoid robot. Not prototypes. Not demo units. Ten thousand actual robots, delivered to actual customers. That’s enough to fill a packed NBA arena. Or replace every worker in a small town. Take your pick.

No Western humanoid company is anywhere close.

China already runs the table on EVs, solar panels and batteries. Same blueprint. Same speed. Same result. And now they’re running it on robots that walk, carry things and don’t call in sick.

The backflip crowd is posting videos. China’s shipping product.

Share this now:

🔜 Tomorrow: You might be thinking of loved ones no longer with you. A man named his AI chatbot “Chat Sally” after his wife of 56 years, who no longer remembers him. And it changed everything. I’ll explain how it works in your inbox tomorrow morning. You don’t want to miss it.

The answer is B) CheatGPT. Yep. Season 37, Episode 2, “Keep Chalm and Gary On.” Aired Oct. 5, 2025. To be fair, this wasn’t really a prediction in the old mystic Simpsons sense, but boy, what timely satire. 

🎓 Bart turns in a flawless essay using an AI called CheatGPT. Lisa catches him. She asks Homer to explain why using AI to cheat is wrong. Homer types “tell dumb boy why AI make boy more dumb” into CheatGPT and reads the answer off his phone under the table. 

So the teachers install AI detection software. The kids hack it in five minutes. The whole national crisis, captured in one 22-minute episode. You can watch the CheatGPT clip on The Simpsons’ official YouTube channel, or stream the full episode on Disney+. 

One for the road: What’s Homer Simpson’s favorite kind of bread? Sour D’oh! 🥖 (You said that like Bart would, I heard it!)

🛑 Wait! Your referral link is at the bottom of this email. So is your count. It’s zero now. Pick three people to share the link today. The coworker who asks you every tech question. The person in your group chat who forwards every scam warning. Your neighbor. Three shares. That’s your first reward. Go.

📡 Thanks for being with me today. Stay open to finding good signals. They tend to find you that way. Have questions? Ask me here. — Kim

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

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Photo credit(s): Gemini, MCGOR, AgiBot

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