📬 Did someone forward this to you?Sign up here. Tomorrow: The FBI built a town in Alabama just to attack it. I’ll tell you why and what it means for you.
Today is Father’s Day, friend.So let me tell you about mine.
I was lucky. I had an amazing father.
My dad taught me how to do so many things, pick stocks, travel, stay focused, be street smart, get the best meat at the butchers and even change the oil in my car. Every day there was a new lesson about some thing. He was tough. If curfew was 10, you’d better be home by 9:45. (Those 15 minutes were not up for debate.)
But oh, was he kind. He always had time for me, made me laugh a lot and was a total prankster.
Like the day he said he’d forgotten something at work and needed me to ride along to the airport. United Airlines, out of Newark. He brought me to a gate, we stepped onto the plane, and there sat my whole family, grinning, waiting to surprise me with a birthday trip to Disneyland.
Image: Kim Komando
I never forgot that feeling. So years later, I pulled the exact same trick on my own son when he was 10. I told Ian he had to go to the dentist though.
That’s the thing about a great dad. The lessons stick, but the love is what you pass down. So today, think about the man who shaped you. Maybe it's your dad. Maybe it's a stepdad who showed up and stayed. Maybe it's a grandfather, an uncle, a coach, the neighbor who taught you to throw a ball, or the boss who believed in you when nobody else did. “Father” isn't only a title. Sometimes it's a man who decided you were worth it.
If he's still around, visit or call him this weekend. If he's not, I'd bet you've got a story like mine. Tell it to someone today. That's how the love keeps moving.
Happy Father’s Day. Now let’s get into it.
Remember when going online made that weird dial-up screech, like a robot stepping on a rake? Now we bank, shop, text the kids and accidentally read 47 opinions about pineapple on pizza before breakfast. It feels like everyone is online. Not quite. The offline crowd has shrunk a lot over the past 25 years, but it still exists.
🌐 Roughly how many U.S. adults don’t use the internet at all? A) About 1 million, B) About 10 million, C) About 40 million or D) Around 100 people? Keep reading, the answer is waiting at the end like it still has a landline.
The password rules everyone follows, capital, number, symbol, came from one 2003 government memo.
Its author regrets it, because forced complexity pushes people toward predictable patterns crooks guess first.
What works: a password manager.
📖 Read time: 2 minutes
You want to use the password “ILoveKK,” but you know the drill. Along with at least one capital letter, you have to have a number and a symbol. We’ve all sworn at that little red “password too weak” bar.
Here’s the part that’ll get you. Every one of those rules traces back to one government engineer in 2003.
🔑 The memo that broke passwords
His name is Bill Burr, a mid-level manager who drew up the official password rules in a memo titled “NIST Special Publication 800-63.” It was based on a paper from the 1980s, before the web existed. His guide became gospel for banks, employers and websites everywhere.
There was one problem. It was wrong.
Bill Burr told The Wall Street Journal, “Much of what I did I now regret.” He admitted he’d been “barking up the wrong tree.”
Why? The rules backfired. Forced to bolt on a capital, number and symbol, people do the same predictable thing. “Password1!” and then “Password2!” Crooks know this.
🧠 What works
The real fix is the opposite of everything you were taught. Length beats gibberish. Every extra character multiplies the guesses a hacker needs, while a lone symbol barely moves the needle.
A long string of random words, something like “purple-otter-canyon-biscuit,” is far harder to crack than “P@ss1!” and far easier to remember.
🔒 The catch and cure
There’s one snag. You’ve got dozens, maybe hundreds, of accounts, and nobody memorizes a different long passphrase for every one. So you reuse a favorite, and a single breach unlocks your whole life. Bank, email, the works. Or you build a little pattern and swap a couple characters, and a hacker cracks that in seconds.
Here’s the fix I use. A password manager. NordPass* builds a long, unique, uncrackable password for every account, locks them in an encrypted vault and fills them in automatically on your phone and your laptop. No more sticky notes. No more “forgot password” emails. No more typing Fluffy123 into 40 different sites and hoping.
Think about how one cracked password could ruin you. Drained accounts. Frozen cards. Hours on hold with your bank trying to prove you’re you. NordPass costs less than a pack of gum a month to lock all of that down.
The phone in your pocket? Snap's CEO thinks it's already obsolete. He's so sure, he's selling $2,195 smart glasses he says will replace it in a year. See what he's betting your future looks like.
Or for audio only, click your favorite podcast player below:
WEB WATERCOOLER
🪪 Fake badge panic: This one’s almost funny. Scammers are impersonating FTC employees and texting people a photo of a government ID to “prove” they’re legit, then demanding money or telling people to move cash to protect it. They must think the feds work like a nightclub bouncer. Don’t reply, don’t call back, but do report it. If someone texts you federal credentials, assume the agency is Arts and Crafts.
The AI tax: The AI boom is taxing your laptop. The shortage of AI memory chips is raising prices at Samsung, Microsoft, Sony and Dell. Phones got hit first, laptops and office PCs are next in line. If your company needs new machines, waiting could cost real money. Get quotes now, compare configs and pad next quarter’s tech budget like it’s your rent and a Pilates-and-crepes studio opened down the street.
🧩 You can’t bolt AI onto a mess: If your numbers live in QuickBooks, your inventory in a spreadsheet, your team in one app and your customers in another, none of it talks. So your AI is guessing. We’re putting NetSuite by Oracle into Komando HQ for exactly that reason. It pulls your financials, inventory, HR and customer relationship management into one place, so AI finally sees the whole picture and helps you decide smarter, not slower. If your revenue’s in the seven figures, try NetSuite Next for free here. It’s something I should have done years ago.*
Your earbuds were almost wiretaps:Check your Beats. Apple rushed a security patch for its Beats Studio Buds after researchers found a flaw that could let a hacker eavesdrop on your conversations through the earbuds. They’re supposed to pump music into your ears, not pipe your private chatter out to some stranger. The fix is rolling out, so make sure your firmware is up to date before your next coffee gossip.
🗣️ Silence got hacked: A chip in the brain is doing what ALS tries to take away: giving words a way out. One man became the first long-term user of an implant that listens to the brain’s speech signals before sound ever leaves the mouth, then turns them into words on a screen. That’s not just sci-fi clickbait. It’s happening in a real clinical setting, for a disease affecting about 30,000 Americans. One tiny miracle with a huge impact.
MY DAILY DEALS
As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you.
🧑🍳 Prime Day’s heating up
Early kitchen deals, served hot.
🔥 Nine jobs, one basket:Air fryer(25% off, $90) 4.8 ⭐ 20,200+ reviews
Easy meals without the greasy mess. The TurboBlaze heats from 90 to 450 degrees fast. Roast, bake, broil and more. Best part? The PFAS-free coating means sketchy chemicals are off the menu.
Image: Cosori
🍟 Easy-peasy sheets: Drop these paper liners(41% off, $10) into your air fryer basket. Catches drips, so cleanup is quick and painless.
Melt, dip, repeat: An electric fondue pot(33% off, $30) holds up to six cups of cheese, chocolate, caramel, you name it.
🍳 Flipping fantastic: Dash’s Everyday Griddle(25% off, $45) has a removable plate that slides right into the dishwasher. Bonus: recipe book.
Flex appeal: This spatula set(30% off, $14, three-piece) slides under anything and handles up to 600-degree heat without flinching.
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication.
🎤 PODCAST: DIGITAL LIFE HACK
AI diagnoses your car
Save $100 on a trip to the mechanic. AI knows exactly what that weird symbol lit up on your dashboard means. It’ll tell you for free. Plus, Kendra wants to keep her great-great grandmother’s recipes alive. I have the app that turns old cooking clippings into a feast of digitized memories.
Click your favorite podcast player below to listen now or later:
🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Running out of room in Chrome’s bookmarks bar? Right-click a bookmark, choose Edit, then delete the name. Only the site icon stays, giving you more space. If you have several from the same site, use a shorter label instead, unless you’ve got a good memory, of course. 😅
💲 What is your phone bill actually costing you? If you are paying over $100 a month, you are overspending. If you are 50 or older, you can get a single unlimited line for $35. Get an additional $50 off when you switch today using promo code KIM50. Same networks. Solid coverage. No contract.*
Click and liftoff: Your tired laptop might need a tiny espresso shot to bring it back to life. Microsoft’s Low Latency Profile, added in the June 2026 Windows 11 update KB5094126, briefly boosts the processor for one or two seconds, exactly when your computer usually acts like it needs to stretch its legs. Microsoft says app launches can be up to 40% faster, menus 70% snappier. Free through Windows Update. Go to Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates > install KB5094126 > then restart when prompted. Do it when you can spare 10 to 20 minutes, not five minutes before a Zoom.
📺 Free TV from anywhere: Before you pay for another TV subscription, try famelack.com. When the site loads, pick a country like the U.K., U.S., Japan or whatever on the globe. A list of available channels pops up on the right. Click one and start watching. There are literally hundreds. News, cartoons for the kids, popular shows.
🕵️ Got a weird toll text or “urgent” bank message? Don’t tap that link. Copy it into your favorite chatbot and ask: “Is this a scam?” It can check numbers and websites, then compare them with official sources. Free second opinion, no panic-clicking.
🚶🏼♀️ Take me on a walk: Click to listen to my latest show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I really need the steps.
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: Commodore
☎️ Call me maybe
Remember when companies charged extra to add features? Now they’re charging you to take them away.
Commodore is back with the Callback 8020, a $499 flip phone designed to protect you from the greatest threat facing modern society: opening Instagram for two minutes and coming back up for air 47 minutes later.
The phone blocks social media, browsers, email, Slack, Teams and most of the digital traps that quietly eat your afternoon. It’s basically parental controls for grown adults.
🔜 Tomorrow: There’s an empty town in Alabama built to get hacked on purpose. The FBI uses it to rehearse worst-case cyber scenarios, from hospitals going down to critical systems getting locked up. I’ll explain why this matters to you.
Tomorrow’s trivia explains why your dashboard might be the most dangerous place your phone visits all summer.
🇺🇸 The answer: B) about 10 million. Pew’s latest data shows 4% of U.S. adults don’t use the internet at all. With roughly 262 million adults in the country, that comes out to about 10 million people. In 2000, nearly half of American adults were offline. Half. Today, it’s down to 4%, and most of the holdouts are 65 and older.
The digital divide is shrinking fast. But for the folks still on the wrong side of it, everyday life keeps getting harder, from booking a doctor to paying a bill.
One for the road you can repeat: If I die, tell my Wi-Fi I love her.
🙋♀️ Have you used AI in a way that actually changed your life? Maybe it saved you money, caught a scam, or helped you land the job. Tell me here.
😌 Take a deep breath. Hold it for a few seconds and let it go naturally. Now that’s a perfect Sunday task. — Kim
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.
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