💰 Your streaming services are stealing $200/year. Here’s how

Welcome to your Thursday, {{first_name | friend}}. Let’s rewind to 2018, when one wrong button click sent millions of Hawaii residents into absolute chaos. People dove into storm drains, frantically called loved ones to say goodbye and wrote what they thought were their final texts.

🚨 The emergency alert stayed live for 38 agonizing minutes before anyone fixed it. Can you guess what the message said? A) “Tsunami warning: Seek higher ground.” B) “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” C) “Nuclear power plant meltdown. Evacuate now.” D) “Category 5 hurricane making landfall in 10 minutes.” The answer’s at the end. And yeah, someone got fired over this.

🐢 Stop the lag: Is your computer running slowly? I bet your antivirus software is dragging it down. Big names like Norton and McAfee are memory hogs. I switched to Webroot because it’s ranked #1 in performance and scans six times faster than the competition. It stops ransomware and viruses without freezing your screen. Get 75% off. More below.*

📥 Like this? Mark me as “not spam” and favorite this newsletter, or drag me from the promotions or junk folder to your primary inbox. This helps tell your email program you like the info you get for free every day to keep you tech ahead. Thank you for being here! — Kim

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You’re hemorrhaging money right now, and you don’t even know it. Streaming services, apps you downloaded once, that meditation platform you swore you’d use daily, they’re all silently draining your bank account every single month. 

The average person spends over $200 monthly on subscriptions and underestimates the actual cost by 40%. Do the math. That’s thousands of dollars a year you could be saving.

Here’s how to stop the bleeding.

Pull up your checking account and every credit card you own. Go back three months and scan every transaction. Look for anything that repeats from the same company. That’s your smoking gun. 

See Hulu three times? Subscription. Adobe every month? Subscription. If your bank lets you sort by merchant name, do it. That makes these money vampires jump right out at you.

Most people have no clue they’re paying for app subscriptions through their phones. 

A ton of services bypass Apple and Google completely and bill you straight through their own systems. Open every app that could possibly have a subscription option, Calm, Spotify, Adobe, Microsoft, Dropbox, AI chatbots, whatever productivity tools you use. 

Dig into their account settings and look for Billing or Subscriptions. Don’t trust your memory here. Check them all. You may even have a subscription for printer ink.

This is where people get absolutely hammered. You’re paying for Netflix, sure, but are you also paying for Paramount+ through Amazon Prime Video? Or Starz through Apple TV? Here’s how to check:

These add-on channels are subscription quicksand.

Look at your list. If you haven’t used something in 30 days, cancel it. Stop lying to yourself about using it someday. You can always resubscribe later if you actually miss it, but spoiler alert: You won’t.

Set a reminder to do this every six months. You’ll thank me when you’ve saved $2,400 by the end of the year.

📤 You know that friend who complains about being broke but has every streaming service known to humanity? Yeah, them. Hit forward and save them from themselves. They’ll buy you coffee with all the money they save. Or use the share icons below to post on your social media. They’ll see it.

Steve found $22,000 using one tip from the show. I share the exact website so you can check for your name. I also reveal the dark psychology of bad customer service and how to legally get expensive software for free.

Listen on Komando.com →

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

🤖 Bring in the truth police: Ever asked Gemini a question and got back two totally different answers depending on how you worded it? You’re not alone. AI Overviews sometimes make stuff up or contradict themselves. Google’s hiring “AI Answers Quality” engineers to verify and make responses more accurate. Next up: an AI to watch over the people watching over the AI. 

Ledger leaks again: Heads up if you bought a Ledger crypto wallet. A third‑party payment system leak exposed customer names and contact details. Ledger says your private keys and coins are untouched, but bad actors love knowing you’re a crypto holder. That info can feed phishing, social engineering or even physical targeting. In a world where thieves hold phones at gunpoint for crypto wallets, this kind of data leak isn’t trivial. Stay vigilant.

No face, still trace: You know how some people cover pics of their kid’s face with emojis for the sake of privacy? That doesn’t work. AI tools can remove emojis and rebuild faces. Plus, every pic you post trains facial recognition and ad algorithms, building up identifiable data. I’m talking about clothing, location, even background objects. Then creeps can find your house, the park by your house and your child’s school. Don’t think you’re giving your kid privacy with a moon emoji.

💼 Hiring is a nightmare. You post a role and get flooded with résumés from people who didn’t even read the description. It is a total waste of time digging for that one qualified person. Stop doing it the hard way. LinkedIn Jobs targets the pros you actually want to hire. Tap into a pool of 1 billion professionals and skip the unqualified mess. Post your job for free right now.*

Ring in results: We all know the drill. The new year hits, and suddenly everyone’s a runner. But according to a new Apple Heart and Movement Study, your Apple Watch might help you keep it up. After tracking 100,000 users, researchers found exercise minutes spiked in January and stayed high through March. Nearly 80% who ramped up workouts early stuck with it past Quitters Day (the second Friday in January), and 90% kept it going. Fitness tracking tech and that ring-closing nudge might be better than willpower alone. Still waiting for Apple to add a Close Your Snack Cupboard ring.

🚘 Chip-based chauffeur: Most self-driving features get brave on the highway, then typically chicken out the moment you hit city streets. Mercedes-Benz says its new system can handle stoplights, turns, intersections, pedestrians, you know, real city stuff (paywall link), using about 30 sensors (cameras, radar, ultrasonic) and a computer doing 508 trillion operations per second. It’s coming to the U.S. later this year. In other news, they finally figured out why the computerized self driving car has crashed. They didn't install the driver.

Layoffs are now a bragging point. Hear why CEOs are openly gutting middle management. 

Listen on Komando.com →

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

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Want to hide everything on your Windows desktop quickly? Right-click the desktop, select View, and untick Show desktop icons. All your apps and folders will disappear instantly. When you want them back, repeat the same steps and turn it back on. Less anxiety when the boss walks by. 😏

🚨 Chrome alert (again): Google is rolling out another update to patch a high-risk security bug. This one can let hackers run malicious code, steal data or mess with your apps through fake browser extensions. Don’t wait. In Chrome, go to Settings > About Chrome, and it will install automatically. You should be on version 143.0.7499.193.

Free up phone storage: Here’s a quick way to get a few GBs back. On iPhone, open Settings > Apps > App Store and turn on Offload Unused Apps. Your iPhone removes apps you haven’t used but keeps the data. On Android, go to Settings > Storage > Unused apps and Uninstall anything you haven’t touched in 30 days. 

👀 Stop Facebook social circle stalkers: You don’t have to lock down your entire profile to get some privacy. In the Facebook mobile app, go to Settings > Audience and visibility > How people find and contact you > Who can see your friends list. From there, set it to friends, exclude specific people, or choose only me.

Friends or family using your Roku? Turn on Guest Mode, so they can sign into their own Netflix without wrecking your recommendations. On your Roku remote, press Home > Settings > Guest Mode > Enter Guest Mode, enter your Roku PIN and hit OK. Add a checkout date, and their logins will automatically be removed that day.

Remember when a piece of wood was just wood? Not a screen. Not smart. A thing that held up your roof or became a coffee table.

Well, mui looked at a slab of timber and thought, What if this could text you, but like, calmly?

Their display panel hides LEDs and touch controls inside wood grain. Messages, time, weather, all the usual digital chaos appears as soft glowing light, then vanishes back into the grain like it was never there. 

It’s backed by an IoT cloud that handles the annoying tech stuff behind the scenes, so the wood can simply be wood that occasionally whispers information at you.

Most tech products scream for attention like that coworker who won’t shut up about their Hinge date. Mui just nods politely and leaves the room.

This is basically a Zen monk who knows your Wi-Fi password.

I’ve got something great for you tomorrow. I’m doing a Deep Dive on the skills to learn to make breakthrough moola this year. She quit teaching and now makes $12K/month working 20 hours a week. He went from janitor to $150K developer. These aren’t fairy tales, they’re blueprints. Be sure to open your newsletter tomorrow.

🚨 The answer: B) “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” Yep, that sentence was broadcast to every phone in Hawaii on Jan. 13, 2018, causing one of the most intense widespread panics because a human, inside a catastrophically bad system, made one very human mistake.

It was a drill, but the employee (later fired) didn’t realize it. During a training exercise, he thought a real threat was underway and sent the live alert using the same interface as the test alert. For 38 minutes, the state of Hawaii feared it was dancing its last hula.

Quick speed check: If you’re still using heavy antivirus software, you are slowing yourself down. Webroot gives you better protection that uses a fraction of the space. It works on PCs, Macs and phones. Grab my exclusive 75% off deal before it is gone.*

I’m thrilled to announce that Dennis from Exton, PA is taking home the $1,000 Amazon gift card from my Christmas Cash Giveaway. Dennis, have a blast on your shopping spree, and a big thank-you to everyone who entered! I’ll have a new contest coming up in February ‘cause I love you and you love cash.

🔥 Now, go face your day with the energy of a dog who just heard a cheese wrapper. — Kim

📣 Don’t keep me a secret: Send your friends to GetKim.com

Photo credit(s): Gemini, Onlyone, mui

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