💀 Your SSN built a stranger

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Good Sunday to you, {{first_name | friend}}. Today’s brain snack comes with a barn-raising twist. Picture an Amish workshop. No power lines. No outlets. Nobody hunting for a charger. Yet inside? Saws buzzing. Drills spinning. Fans doing fan things. It’s like a Home Depot commercial wandered into 1890 and decided to behave.

Now, the Amish don’t reject power tools. They reject the power company. And the work-around they came up with is so clever, engineers call it “Amish electricity.”

⚡ So what powers the saws, drills and tools in many Amish workshops? A) Compressed air piped through the whole building, B) Horses turning a giant crank in the basement, C) Solar panels or D) A very tired neighbor named Gideon on a stationary bike? That guy is really pedaling his services. Keep reading. The answer is waiting at the end, no extension cord required.

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

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

You know regular identity theft. Someone swipes your card, you call the bank, done. This is worse, quieter and sneakier.

It’s called synthetic identity theft. Here’s the creepy part: The crook doesn’t only steal from you. 

They build a brand-new person out of you. (Hence that weird pic above for this story.)

The recipe is simple. A thief buys one real SSN off the dark web, cheap, maybe $3, that’s it. Then they bolt on a fake name, a made-up birthday and a fresh address. Each piece looks fine alone, so the bank sees a shiny new customer.

Then comes the long game. Small charges. Bills paid on time. Credit limits creeping up like a model citizen. Until one day, they bust out, max every card and loan at once, then vanish. There’s nobody to arrest. The person never existed.

The Federal Reserve calls this the fastest-growing financial crime in America, with losses headed toward $23 billion a year by 2030. 

And that Social Security number stitched into the monster? Still attached to a real human. Maybe you.

A child’s number is gold. Clean credit file, nobody watching it, sometimes for 18 years. A thief can ride your 6-year-old’s number until she applies for a student loan and gets denied. Seniors get hit for the same reason. Nobody’s checking.

So how do you fight a ghost? Spoiler: Salt and sage is not going to work here.

Those two steps guard the front door, and crooks know it. That’s why there are so many other ways back in.

A freeze only blocks lenders who check your credit. Payday loans, utility accounts, phone plans, plenty of those never touch the bureaus, so they sail right past your freeze and never show on the report you’re watching. 

And neither step does a thing about the problem of your Social Security number sitting on the dark web, waiting to be sold. That’s where this crime starts, months before any account opens.

That’s why I lean on Coveron (formerly NordProtect, new name and sponsor of my show). I used to use LifeLock, but it got so expensive that I went looking for other options and was thrilled to find Coveron.

It’s like LifeLock but cheaper and better. Coveron watches the places you can’t: the dark web where your SSN and credit card numbers get traded, plus your credit around the clock. It alerts me the moment anything new pops up. Exactly the trail a synthetic identity leaves. If fraud hits, Coveron backs me with up to $1 million in recovery support.

✅ Right now: 66% off, $4.74 a month. Lock it down here.

A thief can fake a name and a birthday. They can’t fake you catching them early. Get proactive now. 

📩 Send this to someone who has kids or grandkids and has never thought to check, or freeze, a child’s credit. Or alert an older adult not paying attention to their credit files.

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(Starts at 45:40) The NBA Finals is a battle of grit vs. hype. ChatGPT is officially predicting a Game 7 Spurs victory over the Knicks. Hilariously, a viral dog named Air Corgi agrees. We’re keeping receipts to see who’s the real baller. If the AI is wrong, it’s going to be a ruff week for tech.

Listen on Komando.com →

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📸 Snap before swipe: You’re standing in Walmart holding sandals like courtroom evidence because the shelf said $22.97 but the checkout scanner says $28.99. That’s what sent one shopper viral after accusing the store of ringing up items at prices higher than posted. Walmart points to possible errors from new digital shelf labels, which are very modern and very annoying. Whatever the cause, the fix is old-school: Take a picture of the shelf’s price, check your receipt and don’t let a barcode pickpocket you.

New Siri, who dis? Tomorrow’s Apple keynote finally delivers the Siri promised back in 2024. The assistant becomes a full chatbot like ChatGPT, with its own app, chat history that syncs across devices and the power to control your apps. The catch? It’s still labeled “beta”, and you might face a wait list when iOS 27 lands in September. I asked Siri what IDK meant. She said she didn’t know. Checks out.

🧾 Fake recovery cops: The phone rings right after you’ve been scammed, and the voice on the other end has good news, the FTC can get your money back. Don’t believe it. The FTC warned fake agents are asking Americans for up-front fees or bank logins to recover losses. Impostor scams cost $3.5B last year, up almost 20%. Real FTC staffers do not demand payment or account access. Hang up, then go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

🍵 The secret drink I reach for instead of coffee: Every morning, I add a scoop of NativePath collagen to my tea. It supports my skin, hair and gut health from the inside out. As we age, our bodies produce less collagen, which is why everything drops, dries out and starts feeling less reliable. I’ve been taking it for years. I know it makes a huge difference because I can tell when I forget to take it. Get up to 45% off plus free shipping and free gifts right now.** 

Start menu steroids: Microsoft is finally treating clicking the Start menu like an emergency response event. Tuesday’s Windows 11 update brings a Low Latency Profile that briefly maxes out the CPU when you launch apps or poke around the desktop. Translation? Apps open up to 40% faster, Start feels up to 70% quicker and Search can find files after two typed characters. Check Settings > Windows Update next week and install it. Why was the slow computer cold? It left all its Windows open.

🖼️ Fictional shopping cart: I don’t trust couch photos on Amazon, and now the app is beginning to push completely imaginary pictures. Amazon mobile search results can include AI-generated product images: not seller shots, not customer photos but machine-made glamour shots. Why? Prettier pictures nudge Buy Now. I hope they also accept fake money. I’d say check reviews, but it’s getting harder to tell what’s real there, too. Keep an eye on those gritty customer photos to get a better idea of what you’re buying. 

Apple quietly bumped trade-in values on its model devices by $50. The catch? Android trade-in values dropped. Plus, Las Vegas celebrity magician Ben Seidman reveals how easily your tech can be swiped.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: On many cars, your key fob can drop the windows before you climb in. Press Unlock twice, while holding it on the second press. The windows will roll down, and the sunroof may open, too. To close everything, press Lock twice and hold the second press. Tiny button, big summer relief.

🤫 YouTube without the evidence: Watching DIY fixes or celebrity gossip you swear you don’t care about? Use Incognito mode, so it won’t affect your algorithm or watch history. In the YouTube app, tap your profile picture > Accounts > Turn on Incognito. A black bar means it’s active. To exit, tap You at the bottom right.

📘 Every AI article sounds like a vocabulary test. Buzzwords. Acronyms. Somebody saying “leverage” seven times. (Ugh.) Meanwhile, your competitor quietly used AI to knock hours off their month. NetSuite’s free “Demystifying AI” guide skips the jargon and shows you exactly where AI saves your business real money. Plain English. Real playbook. Get it free today.*

Hide ugly links on your phone: Want “click here” to open a web page instead of pasting a giant URL? On iPhone, copy the link in Safari, go to Notes, highlight your words and tap Paste. The text becomes tappable. It works in Mail, too. On some Androids, highlight text and look for Convert to text link.

🌐 Slow internet, hard proof: Windows 11 has a speed test shortcut hiding in the taskbar. Right-click the network icon at the bottom right and choose Perform speed test. Click Start to see ping, download and upload speeds. Not getting what you pay for? Screenshot it before calling your ISP. Receipts, darling.

So awesome, AirPods, meet camera duty: Taking a group pic? Your AirPods can act like a remote. With them connected, put your iPhone (or iPad) in place, then open Settings > your AirPods’ name > Camera Remote. Choose Press Once or Press and Hold as your action button. Snap when you’re ready. FYI, these work for AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods Max 2.

🚶🏼‍♀️ Take me on a walk: Click to listen to my latest show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I also make chores go by faster!

The universe got its most expansive MRI.

Astronomers created the biggest map ever of magnetic fields between stars and galaxies, using data from nearly 4 million galaxies collected by Australia’s ASKAP telescope. The survey is five times larger than all previous magnetic maps combined.

This could answer a cosmic chicken-and-egg problem: Did magnetic fields help build the first galaxies, or did galaxies create the magnetic fields? Think of it as night vision for one of the universe’s most invisible forces.

If you’re an astronomy nerd, the details are here. One negative magnet slid over to a positive magnet and said, “Hey, I think I'm attracted to you.” Now picture that pickup line working across 4 million galaxies.

🔜 Tomorrow: Your router is watching you. Without a camera. I’ll explain, then you’re gonna want to tell everyone else.

In tomorrow’s trivia, a tech boss showed up via satellite for something that probably should have required a flesh-and-blood appearance.

⚙️ The answer: A) Compressed air. Yep, “Amish electricity.” A diesel engine fills a giant tank with pressurized air, then pipes snake to every corner of the shop. Every tool runs on a hose. They even have pneumatic light switches. It worked so well in workshops that it moved into their homes to run appliances.

And before you email me, yes, plenty of Amish homes do have solar panels. But those charge batteries for lights and water pumps. They don't have the muscle to run a table saw. The workshop secret is compressed air.

Writer Kevin Kelly visited an Amish family running a $400,000 computer-controlled milling machine. Tucked behind the horse stable. Operated by their 10-year-old daughter.

There is a group of Amish engineers who created the hardware and software for a small self-driving horseless carriage. It's a little buggy. (I’ll see myself out with that one.)

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

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