The forecast on your phone has a secret ingredient: 8,700 volunteers with a thermometer. Meet the Frenches, a family in Gouverneur, N.Y. Ray monitored the stats for 50 years before his son took over. The 11-year-old granddaughter is next.
Two Chinese companies make nearly half the world’s cellular modules, the chips inside doorbells, thermostats and fridges. Your smart gadgets, friend, may be chatting with Beijing. Five minutes on your router shuts the conversation down.
Twenty-five years ago, millions of Americans picked up the phone at the same moment, and most of them couldn’t get through. The network wasn’t destroyed. It was busy. That continues to happen in hurricanes and blackouts, and there are four things you can set up tonight that make you reachable when everyone else isn’t.
Comcast made Wi-Fi motion sensing a headline feature on millions of Xfinity gateways. It reads the ripples your body makes in the signal, through walls, no camera. Here’s the five-minute check, friend.
Flock’s cameras scan more than 20 billion license plates a month, and they’ve found kidnapped kids and closed murder cases. They’ve also tracked police officers’ ex-girlfriends, shown up in a Virginia woman’s front yard uninvited and nearly ended up on 350,000 Ubers. Now, 30-plus cities have pulled the plug, the company is scrambling to add rules and its own CEO reportedly keeps his plates out of the system. Here’s the whole story, plus the free map that shows every camera near you.
Homeowners are opening nonrenewal letters triggered by photos taken from planes and satellites: moss on the roof, a tarp, yard clutter. One insurer-backed imagery network says its cameras cover about 99% of the U.S. population. Nobody knocks, nobody calls, the letter just arrives. Four moves fight back, starting with demanding the photo.
Ralph is saving $875 a year. Marta, $675. Jon, $1,095. Same towers, same 5G signal, way smaller bill. Here’s how Consumer Cellular pulls it off and the two catches to watch for.
Your savings account might be earning $1 a year on $10,000 while an FDIC-insured online bank pays $400 on the same money, with the same government insurance. A fintech collapse once froze $112 million in customer deposits, so here’s how to verify a bank is real before you move a dime.
Uber can find your front door, but for years, 23 million 911 calls annually went to the wrong dispatch center. A federal fix just kicked in, but it still has holes. Here are the phone settings that close them.
Companies are quietly bricking gadgets you already paid for or locking the features behind a subscription. Here’s how to spot the problem and how to buy around it.
One Medical, Kodak and Novo Nordisk all confirmed breaches within days of each other, putting millions of records at risk. A health care network, a household name and a major drugmaker, all hit by the same wave of attacks. Here’s what each breach exposed and what to do if you’re affected.
A reader in Detroit finally looked at his phone bill after 18 months and found it $55 fatter. Here are the exact charges you can delete tonight, plus the honest answer on whether switching to a cheaper carrier restarts the same trick.
A hacker group called ShinyHunters broke into DentaQuest, one of the biggest dental benefits administrators in the country, and leaked 234 gigabytes of data after the company refused to pay. If you’ve ever been on Medicaid or Medicare Advantage, your name, address, birthdate, government ID and health insurance details may now be public. Here’s what to do right now.
Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Bank of America, Krispy Kreme and more settled lawsuits over sneaky fees, bad receipts and data breaches. Payouts run from $3.25 to $5,000, most claims take five minutes and the first deadline is Tuesday.
Two listeners thought they had backups. They didn’t. Here’s the difference that could save your photos, files and five years of memories.
The group that hit Ticketmaster just targeted your internet provider. Here’s what was stolen, why Charter’s statement doesn’t add up and what to do before May 27.
Texas sued Netflix for secretly tracking your family’s every click and handing the data to strangers. Here’s exactly what got collected, how dark patterns kept you hooked and what to do about it right now.
Tens of millions of Ring cameras. New Echo Shows with cameras pointed at your living room and no privacy shutter. A mesh network called Sidewalk covering 95% of the country. AI that scans an entire neighborhood for matches in seconds. Here’s what’s really happening at your front door.
Microsoft just sounded the alarm on a scam exploding across American workplaces. Hackers are sliding into Microsoft Teams posing as your help desk and talking employees into handing over their computers. Here’s the exact playbook, and the three moves that shut it down cold.
Mark from Colorado asked how Consumer Cellular can use the same towers as the big carriers. The answer is the open secret of the wireless world. Once you get it, your whole phone bill starts making sense.
