📬 Did someone forward this to you?Sign up here. Tomorrow: Someone who knows you may be reading your texts, tracking your location and listening to your calls. I’ll tell you the stalker warning signs and how to check.
Let’s get your Monday started strong, friend.It’s June. We’re tossing our $1,000 phones in our cars, on pool chairs and leaving them on beach towels, not thinking much of it. Feels totally normal. Your phone may look chill, but inside it’s doing the gadget equivalent of fanning itself with a grocery receipt.
Every smartphone has a “safe” temperature range its makers swear by. The moment you cross it, the battery starts taking permanent damage and the whole thing can shut itself off mid-text.
📍 Above what temperature is your phone officially in the danger zone? A) 75°F, B) 95°F, C) 115°F or D) 130°F? Take your best guess, then keep reading, the answer’s waiting at the end like a popsicle in the freezer.
🏠 Paper-thin protection: Someone could own your home on paper before you notice anything is wrong. County offices record what gets filed. They don’t verify it. Fraudulent paperwork transferring your title can sit undetected for years. Home Title Lock monitors your title 24/7 and alerts you the moment anything changes. Get a free Title History Report and save 25% on up to two years of title protection.* — Kim
TODAY’S DEEP DIVE
Hack to the future
Image: FBI via YouTube
⚡ TL;DR
The FBI built a 22,000-square-foot fake town wired with real tech and stages cyberattacks on it to train agents.
Why? Because hackers go after hospitals and power grids.
Americans lost $20.9 billion to cybercrime last year.
📖 Read time: 2 minutes
When I saw the video about this, I thought you’d like to know about this, too.
Somewhere in Huntsville, Alabama, there’s a small American town with houses, a hotel, a gas station, a grocery store, a courthouse, a hospital, even an arcade. Traffic lights blink at empty intersections. Nobody lives there. Nobody ever has.
It belongs to the FBI. They built it to get attacked.
The agency pulled back the curtain on a 22,000-square-foot fake town tucked inside a building called the Kinetic Cyber Range. Every house, every shop, every traffic light is wired with working technology.
There is even a data center humming with more than 200 servers, the kind of cold, cramped, miserable back room hit during an actual breach. Agents stage cyberattacks on all of it, in a sealed space where nothing can spill out into the real world.
🏚️ Cybercrime breaks out of your inbox
For years, “getting hacked” meant a sketchy email or a stolen credit card. Annoying, but you’d live. Not anymore. Criminals now go after the stuff that keeps a town breathing. The power company. The water system. The hospital. When those go down, you feel it fast. No lights. No clean water. No working ER. That’s the kind of bad day money can’t fix.
And it’s exactly what the FBI rehearses in there. They flip on a fake ransomware attack and force agents to make the calls they’d make for real, like what happens when a hospital’s computers go dark and patients are waiting in the hall. They practice on a hospital that isn’t real, so they’re ready for the day the threat against yours is.
💸 The number behind the fake town
Last year, Americans reported losing $20.9 billion to cybercrime. That’s a record, up 26% in a single year, pulled from more than a million complaints.
Ransomware ranked the top threat to the systems we all lean on. The FBI didn’t build a pretend town for fun. They built it because the bill is getting terrifying.
The FBI’s town has houses, shops and a courthouse, but no residents. Then again, the smallest town I ever visited didn’t have a town drunk. Everyone just took turns.
🎥 If you have a few minutes, I think you’d like to watch an overview of what the FBI is doing. Here’s the link on YouTube.
📩 Send this to someone who still thinks the worst a hacker can do is clutter your inbox. Those links below make it easy to share. Click it and done.
Imagine a stranger showing up claiming they own your home. It sounds unbelievable, but it’s happening across the country. Criminals are using public information and fraudulent paperwork to transfer property ownership records into their own names, often without the homeowner ever knowing.
What surprises people is that county offices aren’t responsible for verifying ownership documents. Their job is to record what’s filed. That means fraudulent filings can go unnoticed for years. Some homeowners don’t discover the problem until someone has taken out loans against their property or claimed ownership of their vacant land.
That’s why I recommend Home Title Lock. It monitors your property’s title 24/7 and alerts you to any activity. If fraud occurs, Home Title Lock has a team of restoration experts, legal representation, and up to $1 million dollars to resolve it. For a limited time, you can save 25% on up to two years of protection.
Or for audio only, click your favorite podcast player below:
WEB WATERCOOLER
📉 Org chart diet: Picture a manager opening their laptop to send the eighth update about the update, only to find AI already did it, distilled it, color-coded it and somehow sounded more human. Middle managers are the workplace speed bump AI wants paved over. Companies are trimming that layer as AI handles summaries, scheduling, message routing and status updates. The move now is to sharpen your AI skills before the spreadsheet starts making eye contact, which is why I write Splash of AI. It’s free, every Thursday, and packed to the brim with your AI upgrade.
📝 Thank-you note trap: ChatGPT turned the thank-you note into a copy machine with a handshake. Anne Hathaway recently said that when she was hiring for a role, every person on her shortlist sent her the same AI-written thank-you note (paywall link), word for word. Not similar. Same. Meryl Streep’s verdict was brutal and correct: “Nobody on that list gets that job.” The fix is embarrassingly human: Mention one thing you actually talked about.
💻 Coffee shop Wi-Fi trap: That free Wi-Fi at your favorite coffee shop or restaurant puts you on the same network as every stranger in the room. Anyone with basic tools can see exactly what you are doing. And before you think your home network is safe, your internet provider can see every site you visit and legally sell that data. I turn on ExpressVPN everywhere. One tap, everything encrypted, 14 devices covered. Get four extra months on me.*
Bad To The BootROM: Still rocking an iPhone XS, XR, 11, or SE (second gen)? Researchers found a flaw Apple cannot patch. Ever. It lives in the chip's boot code, not iOS, so no software update fixes it. Breathe easy though. A hacker needs your phone in hand and a Raspberry Pi to pull it off, so it's not a remote attack. The only true fix is upgrading to a newer model. Looks like it's time to give these old phones the boot.
📚 Forty-year plot twist: I suddenly feel ridiculous for calling anything a slow burn after three months. A Colorado writer published a children’s book 40 years ago, watched it basically vanish, then this spring, the internet found it and turned it into a bestseller. Forty years. That’s not delayed gratification, that is a mortgage with pictures. The crazy part? The book didn’t change at all, the audience finally showed up. If you’ve got a dream in a drawer, stop letting dust be your editor.
🎤 PODCAST: DIGITAL LIFE HACK
What’s the safest way to pay?
Still swiping your credit card at the pump? Big mistake. When you do, your card hands over your real number. Thieves steal it. The two-minute fix to keep your money safe. Plus, Dan got hit with four fake job interviews meant to steal his information. The suspect? AI bots.
No more fumbling in the dark at 2 a.m. They automatically flip on at dusk and off at dawn. The warm glow is easy on your eyes, and they use only 0.3W. Low power, high convenience.
Image: L LOHAS LED
🧦 Circulation boosters:Compression socks(44% off, $15) help ease swelling and tired legs. Smart grab for travel or long days at a desk.
Fuzzy and cozy: One reviewer says these women’s slip-on slippers(61% off, $14) feel “soft and warm without making my feet feel overheated.”
✂️ Shear genius: Dishwasher-safe kitchen scissors(33% off, $8, two-pack) handle meat, poultry, herbs and more. Bonus: protective sheaths.
Tank you: Vacplus’ toilet bowl cleaner tablets(41% off, $10) fight stains and odors with every flush. Less scrubbing for your porcelain throne.
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication.
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Facebook Marketplace shows “relevant” listings first, but that could mean old or already sold. Next time you search, under Filters, set the date listed to Last 7 days. You’ll see newer posts first. Remember to also peep the seller’s join date. Those blank 2026 accounts are probably scammers. 😒
Using your phone for summer recipes? Don’t lay it flat next to sauce, flour and whatever else is happening on the counter. Prop it on a portable stand, then open on iPhone Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock and tap 10 minutes. Android folks, search Screen timeout in your Settings.
Start menu shortcuts: Windows can put Downloads, Documents, Settings, Pictures and more right next to the Power button. Go to Settings > Personalization > Start > Folders, then turn on the ones you want. Now it’s one click instead of digging through File Explorer every time. No clue why this isn’t the default.
🎙️ Who’s listening? Some apps have access to your phone’s microphone, and they probably shouldn’t. On iPhone, open Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone and toggle off anything suspicious. On Android, try Settings > Security and privacy > Permissions manager and do the same. Check camera, location and contacts, too.
💸 Get money back on Prime Day: If you’re upgrading old tech this week, don’t let the retired stuff rot in a drawer. Amazon takes used phones, tablets, smart speakers and more. Tell them what you’re trading in and its condition, then get an estimated gift card value. And if it’s an Amazon device, you may also get 20% off your next one.
Be on the show! Your story could help millions. Whether tech saved you. Stumped you. Or cost you money. Give me a story about it here. I’ll read it. A producer may reach out to put you on the air. So fun!
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: @Midjourney via X
🫧 Spleen spa day
The inside of your body has been a mystery for most of human history. Then we invented medical imaging and made the experience feel like organ airport security.
Midjourney, the AI image app, is showing off a full-body ultrasound scanner that creates a 3D map of your body in about 60 seconds. Step into a water-filled pod, pass through a ring of ultrasound sensors, and the system reconstructs what’s happening beneath your skin.
No giant hospital machine or claustrophobic tube. Still early, but wow.
🔜 Tomorrow: The app doesn’t announce itself. It looks completely normal, costs a few dollars and quietly hands someone everything, your texts, your location, your calls. It’s stalkerware, and it’s more common than most people think. I’ll show you the warning signs and how to check your phone without tipping anyone off.
Coming up on the next trivia, how your car can vanish in a garage without moving an inch.
🥵 The answer: B) 95°F. That’s it. That’s cooler than a breezy summer day here in Phoenix. Both Apple and Samsung say phones run best between 32 and 95 degrees. Push past 95, and you risk permanently shortening your battery’s life. In a closed car? The dash rockets past 130 in minutes, even when it’s only 80 outside.
That’s why your phone throws up that “needs to cool down” warning and basically goes into a coma until it chills out. Here’s a tip: Pull the case off to let it breathe. And never, ever toss it in the freezer. Condensation will fry it.
🌡️ Which is faster, heat or cold? Heat, because you can catch a cold. (Oh that was a good one!)
📑 Your deed is public record: Anyone can file against it. Criminals use that to transfer property ownership into their own names, sometimes on vacant land nobody is watching. Some homeowners find out only after someone has taken out loans against their property. Home Title Lock monitors your title around the clock and has up to $1 million in restoration support if fraud occurs. See if your home is yours with a free Title History Report. Save 25% when you sign up.*
🤖 The scariest AI isn’t the one that’s too smart. It’s the one that’s too convincing. — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
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Photo credit(s):FBI via YouTube, L LOHAS LED, @midjourney via X
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