Rise and shine

March 25, 2025

🌤️ Rise and shine: Have an Echo or Google speaker? Say, “[Alexa or Hey, Google], good morning,” to turn on your lights, hear the weather and play the news. Personalize it in the Alexa app by tapping More (three-line icon) > Routines > Morning. On the Google Home app, head to Automations (three stars) > Add (+) > Personal.

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Tags: Google, Google Home, home, play, stars

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The truth about Zillow’s Zestimate

ID 87755744 © Sandra Foyt | Dreamstime.com

🙋‍♀️Raising my hand … Hello, everyone. My name is Kim, and I am a Zillow junkie.

I have saved every home I owned, own now and would like to own. It’s fun to track what Zillow thinks the places are worth in what they call a “Zestimate.”

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Why you need a second phone number

ID 253338840 © Rosshelen | Dreamstime.com

I have a second number on my phone. You should, too.

Your main number? Keep that locked down for the important stuff — your bank, doctor’s office and family. But when you’re ordering takeout, signing up for a one-time deal or making an online purchase, why give out your real number?

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🫨 Gone phishing: If you use Gmail or Outlook, watch out for deceptive emails asking for sensitive info or trying to trick you into clicking a malicious link that takes over your computer. Make a mistake and the hackers will hold your PC or data hostage until you pay a ransom. This one’s spreading, so watch out!

Insurance rates rising, here’s what you can do

ID 343799145 © Pravinrus Khumpangtip | Dreamstime.com

My car insurance just jumped 32%. No, I didn’t get into an accident or rack up a few speeding tickets. Since 2020, car insurance rates have skyrocketed by 37%, and in 2024 alone, they climbed another 16.5%. Some states saw hikes of over 50%!

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Flying or cruising? They’re watching you.

You might not realize it, but airlines and cruise lines collect a lot of data, from your seat choice to the websites you browse on their Wi-Fi.

When you book a flight or cruise, they collect the usual stuff, including your name, email, phone number, passport info and payment details. But it doesn’t stop there. They also track:

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Google Shopping changes: Vision Match lets you create what you can’t find — just enter a prompt like “colorful dress with daisies,” and AI will match it to real items. Virtual try-on now works for skirts and pants, and the See this look on you lets you try on beauty products with AR tech.

Don’t fall for this! Fake CAPTCHA tests are popping up. They’ll ask you to do three things: Press Windows Key + R (opens the Run command box), then Ctrl + V (pastes “I am not a robot – reCAPTCHA Verification ID: XXXX”) and hit Enter. You’ve just executed a hidden prompt that downloads malware onto your computer. Snap.

📱TikTok’s parental controls: In a total PR move and after seven years in the U.S., the app is rolling out Family Pairing tools. You can block access at certain times and check who’s following your teens. There’s a new “Time Away” feature to set a schedule and a “wind down” option for bedtime. Why now? It’s looking at a sale or ban next month, silly.

🦆 Duck off: Tell that to your AI chatbot collecting data. Duck.ai is out of beta and lets you chat anonymously, for free, with no account required. You can use GPT-4o mini, o3-mini, Meta Llama 3.3, Mistral Small 3 and Claude 3 Haiku without worrying about your data being collected. Chats are fully anonymized, meaning they’ll never be used for AI training. Try it out.

Doing taxes this weekend? Fun times. Remember that if you made over $5,000 using apps like Venmo, PayPal and Cash App for your side hustle, you’ll get a 1099-K form. I answer your FAQs about this here. Here are each app’s reporting rules.