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It’s a terrific Tuesday, friend. Remember when the internet was mostly people sharing cat videos, recipes and passionate opinions about The Sopranos finale? What a lovely time. Imperva tracks web traffic all year, sorting actual humans from bots (scrapers, scalpers, spammers and AI crawlers), and the results are unsettling.

🤖 How much of all internet traffic is bots, not humans? A) 10%, B) 25%, C) Nearly half or D) 99.99%, you and me are the only real people on here? Keep reading, the answer is waiting to argue with you in a YouTube comment at the end.

💲 Stop getting ripped off: If you are paying over $100 a month for your phone bill, you’re overspending. Get a new 5G phone and an unlimited-everything rate plan for $59 a month or less. If you’re over 50, use promo code KIM50 for an extra $50 off your service. See how much you could save. I bet it’s a ton!* — Kim

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TODAY’S DEEP DIVE

Search and destroy

Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando

🤯 WOW! A Nevada man asked Google for Royal Caribbean’s number. The AI Overview gave him one. The “agent” knew the Venice shuttle schedule, waived a fee and took his card. $768 in bogus charges in 24 hours.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

I hate that I have to write this for you. But you need to know. So buckle up, buttercup, and pay attention.

These nasties are spreading, and I don’t want you or your loved ones to be victims.

🎭 Four faces, one family

The Google Form. A job offer or “account review” lands with a link to a form. It looks perfect, logo and all, right down to the disclaimer at the bottom. The address is the tell: forms.google.ss-o.⁠com instead of forms.google.⁠com. Fill it in, hit “Sign in” and your Gmail password belongs to someone in another time zone.

The calendar invite. You didn’t click anything. A “subscription renewed, $389.99” event appeared on your Google Calendar with a number to “dispute the charge.” Google Calendar auto-adds invites from anyone by default, so it skips your spam filter entirely. The number is the scam.

The “Google Security” call. Caller ID says Google, sometimes from a real 650 number the company uses for automated calls. A calm American voice says someone in Frankfurt is in your account and reads you a code to “secure” it. Google will never call you about your account security. Never.

The AI Overview number. Scammers seed fake support numbers on junk sites. Google’s AI reads those sites and serves the number at the top of your search. That’s what Alex Rivlin found when searching for a cruise, and he got scammed for $768.

🛡️ The checklist

Calendar: On a computer, open Google Calendar > the gear symbol > Settings > Event settings > Add invitations to my calendar > switch to Only if the sender is known. Thirty seconds, and the invite scam is over.
Phone: Google calls no one about security. Hang up. Then check for yourself at myaccount.google.com/security-checkup.
Forms: Before you type, read the address bar. If “google⁠.com” isn’t the last thing before the first slash, close it. A password manager won’t autofill a fake site. That’s your second alarm. I use and recommend NordPass.*
Numbers: Never call a number from an AI Overview, an ad or a calendar invite. Get it from the back of your credit card or the company’s own site.
Second search. Paste any number into Google with the word “scam” before dialing. Takes 10 seconds. Would’ve saved Alex $768.

Where do scammers hang out these days? The search bar. Order accordingly.

🎯 Send this to someone who trusts anything with the Google logo on it, especially if they also run the family calendar. Share this using the links below.

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IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

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WEB WATERCOOLER

🧯 Laptop fire at 30,000 feet: A laptop became an emergency on an American Airlines flight carrying 133 people from Atlanta to Dallas. It ignited about 30 minutes before landing. The crew smothered it in a thermal containment bag. One passenger needed hospital treatment for burn injuries. We’re at 56 battery smoke-and-fire incidents on planes this year. Keep lithium batteries in the cabin, never in checked luggage, and speak up fast if a device feels hot, looks swollen or took a hard fall.

Prime-time price hike: Bad news if you’re shopping for Amazon gadgets. Prices had a growth spurt overnight. Amazon quietly pushed the Echo Dot from $49.99 to $79.99, raised the basic Kindle to $150 and sent the Fire TV Stick 4K Max up 42% to $85. The culprit is costly memory, with AI data centers gobbling up memory chips like Thanksgiving turkey. Alexa, why do you cost more? Silence. Figures.

💸 Bing’s browser bait: Microsoft will give you 500 Rewards points to recruit a friend to Edge mobile, and they’ll get 500, too. Getting anyone to use Edge is already a hard sell. Then there’s the fine print: Your friend, who must be new to Edge, has to sign in and browse with Edge and Bing on at least two days within two weeks of the referral. Microsoft, buying friendships 500 points at a time. So sad.

Chat and tell: Your private AI conversation may come with an FBI forwarding address. A financial analyst, 25, in Florida allegedly told ChatGPT he would kill his ex-girlfriend by the end of the month. OpenAI’s systems spotted the repeated threats and contacted federal agents. The guy was arrested and pleaded guilty. I’m glad the warning worked, but a chatbot isn’t a locked journal. They remember what you type, and apparently, they know someone downtown.

🧬 Memory fights back: This is amazing. Scientists are building microscopic guided missiles for the proteins that have been robbing people of their memory and independence. Last week, University of Essex researchers said AI designed intrabodies, tiny antibody fragments sturdy enough to work inside cells, where ordinary antibodies fall apart. They can stick to rogue proteins linked to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and motor neuron disease. No cures yet, but this could eventually attack the problem at its source.

⏳ ONLY 5 DAYS LEFT

🎁 My merch drop is still here. For now.

Four pieces, one week only, and the week’s almost up. If you haven’t grabbed the hoodie, the tee, the mug or the hat yet, this is the reminder. No restocks. No reprints. Once it closes, that’s it.

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DEVICE ADVICE

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Stuck in a Gmail chain that won’t end? Mute it. On desktop, select the message, click the three dots and hit Mute. On mobile, press and hold the message, tap the three dots, then Mute. New replies skip your inbox and head to archive. You can find them by searching is:muted. Seventh “Thanks!” avoided.

🖨️ Microsoft broke your printer: Yep, they’re actually to blame this time. 😒 Thanks to this month’s Windows update, some apps may fail when you try to print or save something as a PDF or XPS file. Weirdly, it only happens with certain fonts, like Calibri. There’s no permanent fix yet, so sit tight. I’ll keep you posted.

⌚ Is your smartwatch about to get cut off? Certain big-name models are losing updates in 2026, meaning no new features and, in some cases, no security patches. Anything before the Apple Watch Series 9, plus the original Ultra, misses watchOS 27. Pixel Watch 2 support ends in October, while Galaxy Watch5/5 Pro loses major OS upgrades in December. Still tapping to pay? I’d think twice.

🔊 Life will sound better in a week: You know the drill. The TV’s blasting loud enough for the neighbors to follow along. You’re nodding at dinner like you heard the joke. You’re skipping parties because it’s too exhausting to keep up. A reader told me, “Based on your recommendation, I got the Horizon IX. Fantastic. My quality of life improved after only one week of wear.” One week. This tiny device zooms in on voices, drowns out background noise and fits comfortably in or behind your ear. No awkward bulk. No more missing punch lines. Try Horizon IX risk-free for 45 days!*

📸 Taking crooked photos? Turn on the grid. It makes lining up people and keeping the horizon straight much easier. On iPhone, go to Settings > Camera, then turn on Grid and Level. On Android, try Camera > Settings > Grid lines or Composition guide. Handy setting, especially when those margaritas hit. 🤪🍹

✅ Was that picture made with ChatGPT? There’s a way to check. Head to openai.com/verify and upload the image or screenshot. Stick to one image at a time for best results. Remember, it doesn’t prove a picture is fake, just whether OpenAI created or edited it. More tips like this in my free Splash of AI newsletter every Thursday.

KIM’S DAILY DEALS

As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you.

🤖 Tech Tuesday tune-ups

Plug into something better.

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Image: INSIGNIA

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Low on outlets? Tessan’s power strip (20% off, $20) packs 12 charging spots, plus surge protection. The flat plug hugs the wall behind furniture.

⌨️ Gunky gadgets? This electronic cleaning kit (18% off, $14) tackles crumbs, dust and smudges with reusable brushes and screen-safe spray.

Phone perch: Go hands-free with Lamicall’s phone stand (20% off, $8). It rotates a full 360 degrees and holds smaller tablets up to 10 inches, too.

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Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication.

WHAT THE TECH?

Image: @Distinct-Question-16 via Reddit

🐎 Hold your cyber horses

Someone looked at a robot dog and thought, “Great, but can I ride it?” DaxAI’s answer is the Cyber Horse, a four-legged electric mount giving people jerky little joyrides around Beijing’s World Robot Conference.

The 660-pound-payload machine tops out at 6 mph with about 25 miles of advertised range, and it’s designed to haul humans or cargo across slopes, gravel and mud. It’s basically a Chuck E. Cheese animatronic meets an ATV.

The horse has been disrupted twice. Seabiscuit can’t catch a break.

Check it out here. Seeing this in a dream would be a night mare.

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LOGGING OUT …

🎓 What you learned today: The latest scams on Google come through forms, calendars, calls and AI answers, Amazon gadget prices are jumping, laptop batteries on planes need quick attention, ChatGPT isn’t a private diary and AI could someday fight memory-robbing diseases. Not bad for one email. Your public records, loyalty cards and other data trails can end up in searchable online profiles. Tomorrow, I’ll break down the creepy data broker business and what helps remove your info.

💻 The answer: C) Nearly half. Yep, about 50% of everything moving across the internet isn’t human, and a big chunk of it is “bad bots” built for fraud and fakery.

Treat outrage with suspicion. Bot armies exist to make fringe opinions look popular. If a post seems designed to make you furious, it probably was. Designed, that is. Don’t spend your brain cells arguing with a chatbot.

Speaking of bad bots, did you hear about the robot crime spree in my neighborhood? It ran out of battery mid-heist, but the cops still refused to charge it. 🔋

📞 What is your phone bill really costing you? Be honest with me, it’s on auto-pay and you haven’t looked at the line items since 2019. I was shocked. Get a new 5G phone and an unlimited-everything rate plan for $59 a month or less. If you’re over 50, use promo code KIM50 for an extra $50 off your service. Check it out right now, and stop giving away money!*

See you back here tomorrow! Until then, thanks for being here with me. It’d be pretty sad if I were just writing this email for myself. I hope you have an amazing day! — Kim

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

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HOW’D WE DO?

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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, INSIGNIA, @Distinct-Question-16 via Reddit

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