Prime time penalty

September 26, 2025

🚨 Prime time penalty: Amazon just agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle FTC claims it tricked millions into unwanted Prime memberships and made cancellations nearly impossible. $1.5B will go to 35 million customers, $1B to the FTC. Amazon admits no wrongdoing, but it now has to make canceling easier. If you had Prime between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025, you may qualify for a refund. Some will be automatic, others through an FTC claims portal (coming soon on ftc.gov).

Tags: Amazon, claims, easier, FTC, refund

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The tech myths we can’t stop repeating

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Meet your financial evil twin

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A man named William Woods spent years trying to prove he was … himself. Why? Because another man, Matthew David Keirans, stole his Social Security number and birth certificate, built a whole new life with them and lived under Woods’ identity for decades.

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📸 Add Instagram highlights secretly: Create highlights without posting to your story. Open the app, tap your profile button, then the (+) in the top right. Select Story, pick a photo and hit the arrow at the bottom. Under Close Friends, choose someone who doesn’t follow you back and tap Share. Then hit Add to Highlights.

Meet the scammers driving your neighborhood

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Ever get one of those weird texts that says something like, “Your package is waiting” or “Click here to unlock your cash reward”? We all have. Most people figure it’s just a scammy mass text from some sketchy website.

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Saving passwords in your browser? Stop that.

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“Hi, Kim, I save all my passwords in my browser. So why do I need a password manager? Thanks for your newsletter. I can tell it’s a lot of work. The quality every single day is incredible.” — Robby in South Carolina

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⚡️ 3-second tech genius: On Facebook, save interesting posts for later. Tap the three-dot menu on a post, select Save post and find them anytime under the Saved section.

🌎 Map versus reality: Ever wondered how big a country really is? The True Size Of is a free tool that lets you drag and drop places side by side. Type the name of a country or state, move it where you want, and search another. Use the compass in the bottom left to rotate and your mouse wheel to zoom. Cool.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: On YouTube desktop, press 0 on your keyboard to restart a video instantly. Or hit numbers 1 through 9 to jump to that percentage of the playback. Nice.

The airlines sold you out

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Let’s talk about something no one thinks about when booking a flight: where your travel info really goes.

An investigative bombshell from 404 Media just uncovered that the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), a company owned by the biggest U.S. airlines, has been giving federal agencies access to passenger records.

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About 99% of the internet flows through undersea cables

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I bet you imagine the internet as a magical cloud floating wirelessly between satellites and Wi-Fi routers. Nope. It’s mostly underwater.

Nearly all of your “in the cloud” traffic actually travels through fiber-optic cables laid along the ocean floor. These thin strands of glass are buried in some places and simply resting on the seafloor in others.

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