How I got my cell phone number off the internet

July 31, 2024

We talk to Darius from Incogni, who tells us how you can remove your personal data from the internet. Plus, a family claims an Amazon driver stole their cat, people are yelling a lot at Siri, and there’s a new sober dating app.

Tags: Amazon, Apple Siri, apps, cat, cell phone, cell phone number, data, dating, dating app, download, driver, family, Incogni, internet, open, personal data, phone, phone number, Plus, Remove, WHO

🔥 You are so bot: On OnlyFans, the subscription service where folks interact with their favorite sex workers, creators are using AI chatbots to handle replies and form connections before asking for that oh-so-special tip. OnlyFans doesn’t seem to care if this is against their terms of service. They take a 20% cut of their creators’ incomes, and they made $1.1 billion in revenue in 2022. Yeah, that number seems old to me, too, but it’s the last number I could find.

$50,000 lost

On every EV Ford sold this year. Their EV division has lost $2.5 billion so far in 2024, and they’re not alone; U.S. automakers are losing an average of $6,000 for every EV sold.

Meta-morphosis: Meta’s AI Studio for Instagram lets you create an AI version of yourself. The AI “you” can chat with followers on Instagram, Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. It’s free to use at ai.meta.com/ai-studio or in the IG app. I’ll hold off on creating an AI Kim.

“Magical teleprompter”: That’s how startup Final Round AI markets its Interview Copilot app for job seekers. Their tech listens in while you complete a job interview from home and feeds you the perfect answers on screen in real time. Whether or not you think it’s “cheating,” the person interviewing for the job you want might be using it.

400,000 products

On Amazon could put your life in danger. The U.S. government now says Amazon is responsible for dangerous products sold on its platform, including faulty carbon monoxide detectors and flammable kids’ PJs, and it has to inform you if you’ve bought one. Shocker, Amazon’s already appealing.

OpenAI’s new model: Rumor has it GPT-5 is coming later this year or in early 2025. It’ll do a better job handling multistep tasks, and you can upload a ton more text (as in an entire book).

📝 Writing checks is dead: The average American writes just one check per year. Get ready for instant payments, where money transfers with zero delays and no charge — different from wire transfers, ACH and apps like PayPal. Last year, instant payments made up only 1.5% of all payments in the U.S., compared to 84% in India.

⚠️ Talk to your kids: A 16-year-old girl faked her birthdate to sign up for Tinder and matched with a 34-year-old man. The two met up, and then he drugged her and broadcast sex acts to thousands of people on an adult website. She told her therapist, who called the police. These dating apps must find better ways to verify the user’s age.

561-mile flight

For the world’s first hydrogen-powered flying taxi. Its only emissions? Water vapor. It can fly from Nashville to New Orleans on a single tank of hydrogen gas with zero carbon footprint. Here it is in action. Super cool.

🧈 This gold scam panned out: A 74-year-old Maryland man bought gold bars with his life savings and handed them over to a fraudster to “protect his bank account.” After, he saw a story on the local news about a woman losing $1 million dollars to this same scam. He contacted the police, who set up a trap and arrested the scammer. Unfortunately, the gold was long gone.