Woo, it’s 🍟-day, friend! Nine new emojis are dropping sometime next year, bringing the grand total to 164. Let’s be real: Nothing’s beating 😂 and ❤️, the most-used emojis in the world. Rounding out the top five are 😍, 🙏 and 😭. Stick around till the end, and I’ll introduce you to the newbies.

🚨 Only THREE days left! I’m giving away a brand-new iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence ($999 value), no purchase necessary. Pass the link to your friends and family, too! The winner will be picked on Monday at midnight. Hope ya win! — Kim

🆕 Kim Komando Today: Is Google selling Chrome?

⏱️ Daily Tech Update: Deepfake scandal shuts down school

💡 Digital Life Hack: Don’t smile in your passport photo

Here’s a wild stat: 78% of the world’s most common passwords can be cracked in less than a second. The most-used password in the world, “123456,” has been leaked more than 3 million times. And get this: 1.2 million of those were corporate passwords.

This is based on fresh research from my password manager pick. For six years, NordPass has studied how we handle passwords. Let’s dive into the numbers. Spoiler: It’s not pretty.

The most common leaked passwords

NordPass analyzed more than 9 million stolen passwords. The most common:

1. 123456 (found 3,018,050 times)
2. 123456789 (found 1,625,135 times)
3. 12345678 (found 884,740 times)
4. password (found 692,151 times)
5. qwerty123 (found 642,638 times)
6. qwerty1 (found 583,630 times)
7. 111111 (found 459,730 times)
8. 12345 (found 395,573 times)
9. secret (found 363,491 times)
10. 123123 (found 351,576 times)

All of these take less than 1 second to crack. One trick is a brute-force attack, where hackers try every password combo until they hit the jackpot. They also use leaked password databases from previous breaches.

Because many people reuse their passwords, your leaked Netflix login could allow them to access your cable company account, too.

Making a big mistake worse

Of course, all these were stolen or hacked, so you’d expect them to be weak. But the list also includes some you might be using even if you’re more tech‑savvy.

Think sequential numbers or letters on a keyboard (e.g., “567890” or “asdfgh”), repeated characters (e.g., “99999”), or easy-to-guess words like “princess” or “baseball.” You’re not the only one using pet names, hobbies or your favorite teams for inspiration.

Here’s the scariest part: 40% of the most common passwords in the personal and work lists are identical. That means if hackers get into one of your personal accounts, they can waltz right into your work systems, too.

Is it really that big a deal?

A single breach can result in major financial loss, like drained bank accounts or unauthorized credit card charges. Those can take months (or longer) to clean up.

Your privacy can also take a hit. Hackers share sensitive information or impersonate victims to scam their friends and family — or they sell it on the Dark Web, where it can be used for identity theft or blackmail.

Take the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. Weak passwords allowed hackers to shut down a major U.S. fuel supply, costing almost $5 million in ransom alone. Even people outside the attack felt the sting, like victims of PayPal and Venmo fraud who lost money because of reused passwords.

Tips for creating strong, secure passwords

Ready to give your passwords a makeover? Here are a few quick tips to keep your accounts safe and sound:

• Use at least 12 characters (more is better!) with a mix of letters, capitalization, numbers and symbols.
• Stay away from guessable info like birthdays or names.
• Try a passphrase for easier memorization, like “Sunshine&KimKomando!2024.”
• Never reuse passwords across multiple sites.

Woof, I know. There’s a reason so many folks write down their passwords or stick with weak ones. My trick? A solid, award-winning password manager.

Let NordPass do it for you

NordPass generates super-secure passwords and stores them in unlimited encrypted storage. Everything syncs seamlessly across your devices, including Windows, iPhone, Mac and Android.

It does more than remember your logins, though. NordPass checks for leaked credentials, flags weak passwords and even logs you into trusted sites automatically. Need to store your credit card info or important files? It handles that, too.

✅ Right now, try NordPass risk-free for just $1.23 a month. You deserve password freedom!

Speaking of … A man asks the bartender for the Wi‑Fi password. The bartender replies, “You have to buy a drink first.” So the man buys a Coke. “OK, now what’s the Wi‑Fi password?” The bartender replies, “youhavetobuyadrinkfirst — all lowercase, no spaces.”

🚨 No one wants to give you money for nothing: X rival Bluesky just hit over 20 million members. Big shocker (not), crypto scams are now everywhere on the platform. There’s an AI-generated pic of Mark Zuckerberg promoting a fake “MetaCoin.” Others are dangling “FREE Bitcoin & Ethereum.” Don’t take the bait; report the spam and move on.

Heartbreaker: A 79-year-old man lost nearly $1 million to scammers pretending to be WWE wrestler Alexa Bliss. Over the years, they drained his retirement savings and even his granddaughter’s college fund (paywall link). The saddest part? When his son moved the last $100,000 to a safe account to protect it, the man sued and disowned him. He then sent that $100,000 to the scammers, too.

🍏 Using old Apple tech? Starting Dec. 18, there’ll be no more iCloud backups for devices running on iOS 8 or earlier. Device-wise, that’s anything older than an iPhone 4s or iPad 2. Check if you can update to iOS 9 via Settings > Software Update. If not, it’s time to move on, friend. Cheap upgrades: iPad (10th-gen) for 20% off and the iPhone 12 (16% off).

This panes me: On Windows 10, you might see full-screen ads for Windows 11 PCs. Reminder: Windows 10 support ends in October 2025; only CPUs from 2018 onward will support Windows 11. If you’re not ready to upgrade to Windows 11, you’ll still be able to pay $30 for an extra year of Windows 10 updates.

🤖 People don’t want robots reporting the news: A pair of AI news anchors are #opentowork after just two months at a Hawaiian newspaper. The duo, James and Rose, read articles in a virtual studio. Viewers felt more creeped out than informed as they mispronounced Hawaiian names and hardly blinked. Definitely not anyone’s ohana!

Pika-chew on this: Pokémon Go players aren’t just catching digital monsters; they’re training AI to navigate the real world for free. Every time a player scans a location or uses their camera to catch a Pokémon, it builds a detailed 3D map. With over a million scans a week, this tech is filling in missing details on mapped buildings and outdoor areas. Talk about a genius idea!

Love a happy story: A New York woman received the first ever fully robotic double lung transplant. Cheryl, a 57-year-old scuba diver with a black belt in karate, received the procedure following 15 years of chronic lung disease. The surgery was a success and less invasive than a typical transplant. She’s breathing easy and ready to return to her adventures.

🎁 Bring the holidays to life with these fun picks.

• Santa Cookie Elf Candy Snowman is the holiday version of the party game Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza and it is so. Dang. Fun. Under $10, too.
• Print Polaroids from any phone with a mini photo printer ($79, 21% off). It doesn’t need ink and can even print stickers!
• Tamagotchis ($23) are tiny virtual pets that have been wildly popular since the ‘90s. Finally, a gift that impresses both kids and the 35-year-old millennial in your life.
• Flex your pop culture expertise with a celebrity trivia game for under $15 … because everyone needs to know Nicki Minaj used to work at Red Lobster.
• Wear out dads and kids with a T‑ball hitting set (38% off). Just don’t miss and make it onto one of those YouTube fail videos.
• Monopoly GO! (under $15, 28% off) is the more family-friendly version of Monopoly. Bank heists in Unicorn Land are more exciting than property management.

The free video editor does it all: VLC is a free, open-source media player that plays almost every audio and video file format in existence. It runs quickly, and there are no ads. Love that. It’s also simple to use.

🕵️ The case of the missing Edit button: The Edit button in your iPhone Photos app was last seen in the upper-right corner before a recent iOS 18 update. Now, it’s at the bottom of the screen between the Info (i) and Trash icons. The icon looks like three stacked sliders. Apple probably thinks this is more user-friendly, but I beg to differ.

App-solutely attached: Android’s Digital Wellbeing tool just got smarter with Screen Time Reminders, aka gentle nudges when you’ve been glued to an app for too long. To turn them on, go to Digital Wellbeing and parental controls > Screen time reminders > Turn on. The catches? You can’t set a time for them to appear, and you can’t control how often they pop up. Still, give it a shot, and let me know if they help!

🎄 “How long until …” Christmas, a vacation or a birthday? Just ask your smart assistant (Siri, Alexa or Google) to do the math for you. This is way easier than counting on your fingers.

Welcome to the 21st century: You can finally save WhatsApp messages as drafts. Your unfinished messages will appear at the top of your chat list. Look for Draft in green under your contact’s name to the left of your saved message.

Using free or outdated security software? That’s not smart. You need antivirus software that offers real-time protection against viruses, spyware and other online threats. Use my pick to cover five devices for $19.*

Sometime in 2025, we’re getting a bug-eyed face, sasquatch, apple core, orca, trombone, treasure chest, ballerina, rockslide and fight cloud, like in old cartoons. I prefer 🥊💨

👋✌️👋 Before I go: The 😂 emoji was the 2015 Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year. That’s only two years after the word “emoji” was added to the dictionary. What a defining moment. And let’s not forget when the entire Bible was translated into emojis. It’s called “Scripture 4 Millennials.” I wish I was kidding.

😏 If you really think about it, Moses had the first tablet that connected to the cloud, not Apple.

Dang, that was a packed newsletter. If you’re on the fence, take this as your sign to check out NordPass. A password manager will change your life, really. See ya tomorrow with the best tech newsletter in the USA! — Kim