How many online accounts have you made over the years? 50? 100? More? That’s enough to fill a digital graveyard.
A new study shows that 25% of all online accounts are never used again, but they don’t just disappear. They sit there, wide open, with your email address and password attached. These forgotten logins are called “zombie accounts,” and hackers love them.
Why? Because most people reuse passwords or use easy-to-crack ones. And those old accounts? They’re missing security updates, have no two-factor authentication, and usually are linked to your main email address.
Here’s the scary part: Hackers use a method called credential stuffing. It’s lazy but effective. Basically, bots test your old usernames and passwords across thousands of popular sites: Gmail, Netflix, Amazon, even your bank.
If they hit a match (and they often do), you’re toast. They can steal your identity, drain your accounts or hold your data for ransom.
What’s worse? These attacks happen 24/7, using bots that can test thousands of logins per second. One weak link, one zombie account and they’re in.
Great, now they’re logging into your PayPal while you’re still trying to remember if it’s passwordDog! or Dogpassword!
You can go through all your accounts one by one to kill off those you don’t use, but that’s a hassle and you won’t do it.
Think your browser’s built-in password manager will save you? Nope. It’s lame, really.
If someone gains access to your device even for a minute in person or via malware, they can unlock all your saved logins in Chrome, Safari or Edge with little effort. Worse, your browser won’t warn you if your passwords have been leaked online or on the dark web.
You know the feeling. You want to watch a specific movie, maybe an old favorite (hello, 1999’s The Mummy) or that buzzworthy show everyone’s talking about, but you have no clue where to find it.
Instead of spending those precious moments actually watching it, you’re playing streaming detective: Netflix? Hulu? Prime Video? Is it free? Rentable?
📖 New Kindle on the block: Amazon just dropped the Kindle Colorsoft ($250). It’s $30 less than the fancier Signature Edition with wireless charging, an auto-dimming light and more storage. Perfect if you only need the basics in crisp color. Pro tip: Trade in your old Kindle and save up to 20% off.
We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.
How many emails Mark Cuban reads and replies to every single day. No assistant. No Slack. Just three phones and an email trail stretching back to the ’90s. Meetings? Pass. He’d rather crush his inbox than lose an hour to a “quick sync.” Bonus: Gmail’s auto-replies do 20% of the heavy lifting.
Hidden Facebook messages: If you’ve been on the app a while, chances are you’ve got tons of unread DMs sitting in your Message requests folder. That’s where Meta sends chats from people you’re not friends with. To check, tap the Messenger icon > Settings > Message requests > You may know.
Texts from the sky: T-Mobile just launched T-Satellite, a Starlink-powered service that lets you text (and alert 911) when you’re somewhere too remote for regular bars. It costs $10/month, works with over 60 phones and covers most of the U.S. You’ll need clear skies and an eSIM-enabled device. It’s not fast, but neither are rescue helicopters.
The size of Kioxia’s new SSD. And it fits in one device. It’s made for AI and data center workloads where raw capacity beats flashy speed. Think: massive training datasets, not movie marathons. It sacrifices performance to keep signal integrity in check, but it’s perfect if your job is “store the internet.”
🐓 Suspicious poultry alert: A Reddit user asked ChatGPT how to get rid of a 160-pound dead chicken. GPT tried to stay helpful (“Call animal disposal”) but couldn’t ignore the details: “Are you sure this is a chicken?” It’s the latest in a trend of viral “cursed prompts” that test AI’s limits.
Blue screen, black soul: Remember the Windows blue screen of death? It just went goth. The QR code? Gone. The frowny face? Dead. Instead, you get a sleek black screen and a new Wi-Fi-powered quick machine recovery feature that can resuscitate your dead PC like digital CPR.
🕳️ Divine rug pull: A Denver pastor and his wife convinced their church to invest $3.4M into a holy crypto scheme allegedly blessed by God. Spoiler: God did not 10x those returns. Now they’re facing 40 felony charges, including racketeering and securities fraud, and the coin is worth about as much as one prayer in the blockchain void.
What Paramount+ is coughing up for the streaming rights to South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone just pulled off the media heist of the decade: five years, $300 million a year. And yes, it’s still a cartoon about poop jokes.
💥 3D guts and glory: Caltech’s researchers built PillTrek, a tiny 3D-printed smart capsule that monitors your gut like a biochemical Fitbit. It tracks pH, glucose, serotonin, you name it, by crawling through your insides like a nerdy spy. It’s cheap, wireless, and eventually, yes, it comes out the old-school way. Consider it a poop diary with WiFi.
⚡ Office apps get speed boost: Microsoft’s new Startup Boost preloads Office apps like Word and Excel in the background at boot. Apps chill in a paused state until you open them, shaving seconds off launch time. It’s already live for some Word users and will hit everyone by September. Your PC: now preheating like an oven.
Uber’s new girl mode rolling out: Women Uber riders in LA, SF and Detroit can request women-only drivers. The Women Preferences initiative is already live in 40+ countries (paywall link) and has logged 100M rides. Such a great idea.
🧠 Mind over mouse: Meta just unveiled a wristband that reads your muscle signals to control devices. No touching, no implants. It decodes electrical pulses (paywall link) in your arm to move cursors, open apps and type midair. Write your name in space and watch it appear on your phone. I accidentally thought about Slack, and now I’m in six meetings.
Prop and circumstance: A Pennsylvania couple sold a floor buffer on Facebook Marketplace to a guy who paid with cash from the set of a movie. Literally. The bills said “for motion picture purposes” where “The United States of America” should’ve been. He took the floor buffer, blocked them and vanished like he had a Marvel budget. Cops are investigating.
🗣️ Prove you’re a human: OpenAI’s Sam Altman warned the Fed that we’re teetering on a “fraud crisis” due to AI tools that can impersonate you, your voice or your kid’s. AI fakes are calling parents and diplomats. The White House is prepping an “AI Action Plan.” Altman pitched The Orb for human verification. I told you all about this months ago.
That’s how many pet owners said they’d date their dog, if it were human. Yes, this is real. Thanks to TikTok and a little too much ChatGPT, people are anthropomorphizing their pets … and catching feelings. Yeah … it’s less weird if you don’t think about it.
✅ You asked and here it is. A cloud backup I trust: Total Drive. It’s simple, secure and just works. And get this: Right now, you can get a massive 10TB of storage for only $18. Don’t wait for a hard drive crash. Back it up before you lose it all for good.
Ring of suspicion: Police can now request your doorbell footage again, without a warrant, if it’s part of an “emergency” investigation. The program was paused earlier this year, but Amazon quietly flipped the switch back on. So yes, your front porch cam is now part of your local precinct’s surveillance network.
