Stop annoying political texts

Kim Commando
It's better over here.

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Kim Commando
Hey, it's Kim Commando today, your daily podcast to keep you up to date with all things digital and beyond. And I'd love to have you be a part of our podcast. You can make an appointment to speak with me. Just head over to commando.com. and on the top right, there's a button that says email. Kim, fill that out, and that's it.

Okay? You know Iggy Azalea? She's the australian rapper who did that song fancy. You know, I'm so fancy. Well, anyway, her real name isn't actually Iggy Azalea. It's Amethyst. Amelia Kelly. This is a little fun fact that you never knew until now. Well, this past week, she shared where her stage name comes from. Are you ready? Her email recovery password. Yeah, you know those security questions like, what's the name of your first pet? What street did you grow up on? Well, for her, it's a combination of both. Her first dog's name was Iggy, and then she grew up on Azalea street. So think about that. What would it be for you? The name of your first pet and then the street that you grew up on. So you became this big time rapper celebrity. What would that name be? Okay, well, for me, it would be. Let's see, Tippy Washington. Tippy Washington. Could you imagine? Hi, I'm Tippy Washington. This is the Tippy Washington show. No, Kim Commando works. That's my real name. Hey, listen, you're about ready to get more tech smarts, because every single thing is truly a tech thing. And let me tell you, the best way for us to grow the show is for you to tell a friend. That's it. Just tell one friend. Oh, and also tell me what you'd like to hear more about. Just go to commando.com. and then there's. There's a link that says, ask him. And I read every single note that you send me there. Oh, and great. Sponsors helped to make this show possible. And let me tell you something, I always negotiate a money saving deal with them.

Now to see all the deals and all the special links that you need to use, just head over to commando.com sponsors. Alrighty then. Every single day, whether it's a work day, a weekend, or even a national holiday, you can count on me to scan at least, at least 35 different websites and talk to industry insiders to make sure that we are both up to date with what's going on in the tech world. And here are the top five things that are happening right now that you need to know about. And we're going to start with, yes, we are in uncharted waters. There has never been a presidential election like this one, right? Oh, gosh. Emotions are white hot. Donation requests are ceaseless, while loud voices say don't donate at all.

We have email and all these political texts. So how about a little help first? Whether you donate or not, never donate through text or an email link. The chances of fraud are extremely high. And let me tell you, cyber crooks are out there big time using legitimate looking political ads to take you to malicious websites. So if you want to donate, just always go directly to the candidates official website. Now, for really bad text messaging, you're just getting overwhelmed with political text, okay? You can always just reply with the word stop. Okay? A legitimate organization will make those text messages stop when you reply with stop. But if it's not a legitimate organization and say it's a spammer, well, that's just going to put you on a list to get even more political texts. Oh, I know, it's just a nightmare. So on your phone, you may be able to block senders who you don't know. And if you need those steps, just hit commando.com dot. All right, moving on to number two. If you're watching online job postings, you might think, wow, all these companies are hiring. And these are really great companies to have on my resume.

Listen to this. As many as 40% of all online job offers posted by corporate America simply don't exist. Posting fake job listings has become a standard procedure for so many large businesses. While most companies don't want to speak publicly about it, internally is a whole different story. They justify it as a way to give their current staff the impression that the company is healthy and growing.

But employers also use it as a subtle way of reminding staff members who aren't really pulling their weight, that the company has a steady supply of new hires right in the pipeline. Who will gladly step in and do the work. So remember that office rebellion called quiet quitting or lazy girl Mondays on social? Well, keeping a fresh supply of job postings have put up brakes on all of that. Now the buzzword is quiet. Stay.

Moving on to number three. Let's go to Georgia for this. The couple in Georgia got scammed out of nearly $50,000. They told Fox Five in Atlanta that all it took was 19 minutes, and they lost years and years of savings. Here's how it went down. Gloria Moss got texts from what she thought was Chase banks fraud department, saying that her husband's credit card has been compromised. Okay, the text included links and a phone number. Now, Gloria smart, she didn't click the link. She knew better than that. But she called the phone number thinking that, well, that's the safe bet. Well, she thought she was talking to a real agent to cancel the card. Instead, her account was drained. Now, Gloria filed a complaint with Chase, but they wanted the phone records to prove that she wasn't at fault. So she hired a detective who traced the scam to a woman in Texas. Yeah, they did all this. Audrey Michelle Townsend was charged with a felony for stealing $50,000. Now, the mosses have appealed the case to chase to have it reopened, because their policy says, if you see that money was removed from your accounts and you did not authorize the transaction, let us know right away. We will reimburse you. Guess what? So far, they haven't gotten their money back.

Moving on to number four. There's a medical revolution happening all across the country. I'm talking about the Apple Watch. It has quietly become the favorite medical device of family physicians everywhere. More and more doctors are asking their patients to get an Apple Watch because it's a big part of diagnosing and helping patients manage disease. Whether or not the watch has been specifically approved as a diagnostic tool for a particular malady by the regulatory bodies. But don't let this mislead you sometimes, you know, the FBA is so slow in recognizing medical advances, and your local physician can only treat you and sometimes save your life based on what you tell them. So now, physicians are reporting that patients routinely come in and report that the watch told them that they have Afib, which, as you know, is a life threatening heart disease that they may not have otherwise known about. And so from there, the doctors can use more sophisticated tests and also save lives. So if you have any type of issues with your heart, really, an Apple Watch could save your life. Finally, this coming in at number five. Would Jesus be on social media? Yeah. Okay. Would Jesus. What would Jesus think if he read your social media posts? No, I'm not going to launch a sermon, but it's an interesting question asked by the Church of England. Now, here in America, the Episcopalians are the first cousins to the Church of England. With that said, here's what the church has to say about Facebook, Instagram, TikTok X, and all the rest.

Social media is the wide open doorway to cruelty, ignorance, stupidity, racism, sexual abuse, traumatization, a viral sense of despondency, tribalism, high levels of distrust between individuals, lack of accountability, and general incompetence. Wow. Did they leave anything out? After years of research, study, and interviews, the church had nothing good to say about social media on any level. So then, would Jesus be on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram X or any of the other sites? An interesting thought as you post this weekend.

All right, we have five clues that your phone has tapped and somebody's listening in. Oh, how you can rent a pool this summer. Yeah, I said rent a pool.

We have a great tip about stuff that you may be buying on Amazon that you just can't return. And then later on, some new apps that will help you track your air quality. And of course, we have all your great phone calls. And you have me, Kim commando.

It's better over here.

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Kim Commando
You know, every single day I send out a free newsletter called the current, and it is reaching over 500,000 people. It's just amazing. It really is. And in order to maybe entice you to actually try my free newsletter, I am giving away a $1,000 gift card right now to your favorite airline so you can take a vacation. And all you have to do and when you enter is get at least one issue of my free newsletter. That's all. Just take a look at it. If you don't like it, you can unsubscribe. There's a one click unsubscribe link at the bottom of every single newsletter. So to enter, to win that $1,000 gift card. All you have to do is go to the special address, winfromkim.com dot. Once again, that's winfromkim.com. and that's where you just go ahead and give us your email address. And then you also enter to win that $1,000 gift card. And you're also subscribed to my free newsletter, but you're going to love it. And just a quick reminder, there's an unsubscribe link at every single newsletter that you receive. And if you're sitting there saying, well, I already get this great newsletter, Kim, can I still enter to win? Of course you can. Just go to winfromkim.com dot. All right, let's get this party started with Donna in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Hello there, Donna.

Donna
Hi, Kim. I can't believe I'm actually talking to you.

I listen to your radio show, and I read your newsletter, and I'm definitely not a digital goddess like you, so I'm always learning something.

Kim Commando
Well, that's awesome. Well, thank you for all your kind words. What's going on?

Donna
Well, I'm an artist, and I make jewelry. I do quilts. I also donate quilts for veterans, and I do stained glass. However, I'm not good at marketing and I don't really like selling. But I'd like to have a website so that's easy to maintain and not too expensive. So I could then say, oh, I have a website if you want to see my jewelry or stained glass, and then my friends. And. And then after that, I could maybe list a couple of things on Etsy or eBay and then get some business directed to my own website.

Kim Commando
Okay, let's talk about websites. Okay.

Donna
Uh huh.

Kim Commando
You know, there is this big locomotive train on the track right now by the name of AI, artificial intelligence.

Donna
Uh huh.

Kim Commando
And what's happening with websites in particular is that traffic is going in the crapper because people don't need to go to websites anymore. Like, for example, you would go to normally, what, WebMD, if you had a rash, okay, you got this rash, and then it would come back, and you'd be convinced after five or ten minutes that you have dengue fever or cancer or something like that.

All right, I. So now people can go to, like, chat GPT and upload a picture of the rash and say, what is this? And then Chat GPT will come back and give its whole analysis, hopefully correct. But you don't need to go to all these different websites. And that's why Google search results are actually trending down. Traffic is down.

And so you said a couple of things in the beginning where you said, I'm not really sure how I would do this, creating a website. And, you know, there are ways that you can create a website overnight. And we can talk about those, of course. Like, one is called Wix, another one is called Squarespace, another one is called Weebly. But when it comes time to sell products, especially those that are handmade, and you did mention Etsy, is that rather than going through the whole rigmarole war of registering domain and then building the website and creating all the menus and the features, making sure that it works on a Samsung Galaxy and an iPhone and a Chromebook, and, you know, it gets, and then make sure you also have search engine optimization done the right way. And the marketing and the words and the copyright notices, it's all that stuff, let me tell you. It's a big job.

Donna
Wow.

Kim Commando
Is that what I would like you to do is to just really focus on Etsy and just open up a store on Etsy, right? Where you're going to put your you put your stained glass and your, and your jewelry, and you're going to take good pictures of it. You're going to price it fairly and respond to any request for any additional information, ask for reviews, and really work that business.

Instead of, instead of focusing your time on the web, I want you to focus. I want you to focus on just your store, okay?

And then when you go to, like, a farmer's market or you're going to a craft show or something like that, I mean, you can always take your orders directly through Etsy. You could take them also using something called square.

And I'm sure you've seen have you seen the square where it just plugs right into the phone and you can swipe a credit card right there?

Donna
Yes, I have seen that.

Kim Commando
So, so, you know, so that's where I want you to focus on is to create a great brand for yourself, a great name, good logo. And if you're not sure how to do any of this, you know, ask around people nearby you, or you can go into chat GPT and say, make me a logo that is this. And it's, it's beautiful, and it's it has these colors or these elements or make it look art deco, whatever it may be.

Donna
Did you say chat GBC? I'm not familiar with that.

Kim Commando
Okay. It's called chat GPT. So, like, chat and g as in girl, p as in pretty, and t as in terrific chat GPT.

Donna
Okay.

Kim Commando
Okay. So it's chat. So it's chat GPT. It's from OpenAI, and that's a place where you can do a whole bunch of things. You could ask chat GBT to write up product descriptions for you, advertising taglines, like I said, create that logo.

Welcome letters form letters for customer service, thank you letters for your orders, whatever it may be. And see, and that's the thing when we start talking about AI, and that's what we're talking about with chat GPT. And of course, there's Gemini, perplexity and copilot and all the rest is that you need to make sure that you talk to AI and you tell it certain things. Like in this case, what you're going to be wanting to say, Donna, is that, you know what? I need you to be a marketing expert who knows a lot about selling jewelry. And I need you to make sure that this copy is short and compelling and it's 15 words and has a good click to action button or whatever it may be. And so you start playing around with it. But in answer to your question, I know I went on Tangent, but I'm coming back right now, is that just focus on Etsy because you know what? It already has the traffic. If you build a website, you're going to have to build all that traffic, and traffic's going down. I don't want you to waste your time there, just for time is of the essence. Just go ahead and go to etsy.com and set up your store there. And thank you for your call. You know, let me clarify something now. When I was talking to Donna, I said that the web is going away. I firmly believe that websites are going away simply because of chat, GPT, copilot, Gemini, perplexity and all the rest of them that are coming down the line. And the reason is, and I use the example of WebMD, but pretty soon when you go to chat GPT or whatever, and you say, for example, you know, what type of dress would look good on my body, and you upload a picture of yourself that there's going to be links to those dresses that you can buy, there's going to be links to furniture if you put out a layout of your living room.

I mean, so I want you just to be prepared for the future as we are going at this accelerated pace. So if you have a career that's based on websites, you really have to start looking around at some other options.

All right, let's talk about some clues that your phone is tapped. Have you ever had that nagging feeling that someone could be eavesdropping on your conversations, taking a look at all your text messages and photos, or tracking your every move. Well, here are some clues to look out for. Number one, take a look at your phones battery. Is the battery draining faster than usual? Is it hot to the touch? Your phone is. If you say yes, then maybe your phone could be tapped. Next, your data usage just skyrockets, but you're not using a bunch of apps or watching any videos. Next, you start seeing some strange things. Maybe it's pop up ads an app appears that you didn't download. You get these weird text messages just full of numbers or letters. Okay, yeah, that's a big sign there coming in at number four, your phone starts lagging. It's taking slower to open apps and videos and get your email. And finally, this. Some sites start looking strange. Maybe the logos are pixelated or stretched. Now, if your phone is tapped, here's what you need to do. Back up all your important data and then you have to do a complete factory reset. All right, stay right where you are. We have more of your phone calls coming up that you just never, ever want to miss.

T Mobile Spokesperson
Now at T Mobile, get four 5g phones on us and four lines for $25 a line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins, all on America's largest 5g network.

T Mobile Spokesperson
Minimum of four lines for $25 per line per month with auto pay discount using debit or bank account. $5 more per line without auto pay, plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection. Charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue. Bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement too. Bill credits end if you pay off devices early.

Kim Commando
Ctmobile.com dot you know, Amazon Prime Day is right around the corner. But before you go shopping on Prime Day, I have to tell you about some things that when you buy them on Amazon, you can never, ever return them if you don't want them. And then later on, how you can track your local air quality using these free apps. And of course, we have your phone calls. But before we get to all of that, this is really fun. I mean, it's summertime, and I bet many of you are sitting there with this beautiful pool in your backyard thinking like, oh, it's just a place for me to chill and grill. But what if I told you that you could be making money with that pool? Yeah. Enter swimpley. That's s w I m p l y. Think of it as like the Airbnb of swimming pools, the online platform lets you list your pool for rent to people who are looking for an escape from the heat. So here's what you need to do. You head to the swimbly website, or you use the app, create an account, list your pool. You want to have all the details, like its size, its depth, amenities, and any rules that the swimmers have to follow. And remember, high quality great photos are super important. Then you can decide how much to charge per hour for the pool use. And then once you're done, you just manage bookings, communicate with renters, coordinate schedules. Again, that swim flee. I took a look at swimming pools around me and they were going for anywhere between, say, like $25 to $75 an hour. Wow. One pool was $100 just for the entire day.

So, you know, just look at the app, you can see what your competition is. But if you have a pool just sitting there, let somebody else use it, and then you could be making some extra money. Not too bad, right?

Let's see. Susan in Indianapolis. Hi there, Susan.

Susan
I'm newly into independent contractor, and I know that I have to pay taxes because it's not coming out of my check and I'm having a terrible time. Is there a dollar amount threshold before taxes have to be paid or.

Kim Commando
No? Are you kidding? Come on.

I mean, Susan, you've been around. The government wants to take every little bit it can from you or how much it can.

Yeah. So what do you do?

Susan
I'm packing lip balm tubes into their display box, and then all of the display boxes go into a storage box and I pick up a load, 2000 of them at a time. Come home, do it at work. I do it here at home. I can get up and put the laundry in the dryer and then come back and do some more.

Kim Commando
How did you, Susan, how did you find this gig?

Susan
A friend of mine went to work for this company that is the lip balm people, and she offered me an opportunity to work from home, and it's my second part time job.

Kim Commando
Wow.

Susan
So it's working out great.

Kim Commando
See, now, when you're a contract employee, you know, I'm not a tax person. I'm not a tax accountant. I can't give you tax advice. Okay.

Susan
Okay.

Kim Commando
But one of the great things of working from home is that, you know, for you to go drive back and forth to go pick up the supplies and the room that you are using in order to make the money. I mean, there are a lot of great deductions for you to do this and what you want to do is make sure that you have a package that can help you be self employed, and that will say that we'll ask you a whole bunch of questions, and then this way, you know that you're taking every deduction that you can, but as well as you're making those quarterly tax payments, because what you don't want to do is, I have a friend of mine who's now in this position, by the way, decided that maybe she didn't need to pay taxes on her commissions, and now she owes the IR's, like, $42,000.

Susan
I don't want to be in that position. Thank you very much.

Kim Commando
And I looked at her. Her name is not Mary, but I looked at her, and I was like, mary? I mean, yes. I mean, you were, like, 42 years old. You know that you have to pay taxes, okay? There's no dumb blonde tax relief fund here. Okay?

Susan
I'm not blonde, so that's okay.

Kim Commando
Well, I'm blonde, so I can give a dumb blonde joke. If you're not blonde, you can't talk about dumb blondes. But anyway, so here's the deal. So when you. When you start looking at the different programs and the different packages, you know, especially when it comes to taxes and the IR's, I like to go with the big names. Right.

Susan
Okay.

Kim Commando
And so with quickbooks, it's going to cost you around $15 a month. Okay? And they have a. They have a whole section called self employed, so that this way, it'll track your expenses, your mileage, and your invoices. And then also, because they own turbotax, when it comes time to actually file your taxes, you have everything in one convenient package. Okay?

Susan
That's easily readable to them.

Kim Commando
Exactly.

And, you know, and then there's also, you know, self employed versions of these different tax programs. But, you know, for really what you're doing, I'm gonna say either look at Quickbooks self employed. All right? And I guess, like I said, that's about $15 a month. Or you can look at freshbooks. Freshbooks is a little bit less expensive per month. They've been around the same time as far as longevity. And so it's really up to you to see which one that you're more comfortable using.

Susan
But, you know, never heard of fresh look, fresh book?

Kim Commando
Yeah, fresh books.

Fresh books are quick. And. And you know what? And I'm. I think that's so cool. That's what you're doing. I mean, yeah. It just goes to show you that if you're sitting there saying, you know, I can't find a job.

I need to make some money. I mean, you have to really sometimes think outside the box. And that's why, that's why I was asking you, Susan, like, exactly what, what you're doing, how you find that, how you found that skig and this opportunity, because, you know, because of the Internet. I'm just telling, there are just so many great things that you can do. I bet you they're selling all that lip balm online and your, Susan, putting it all together.

All right, Amazon Prime Day. Oh, I know you're super excited. There's so much going to be on sale, so much that you're going to buy that you probably don't need. But I wanted to pass along some things that you buy on Amazon that you can never return, which, by the way, Amazon sells about 15 million products, right? And not all of them are returnable. We're going to start with hazardous materials, flammable liquids or gases. Buy those, you're out of luck. You got it. You can't send it back. Gift cards and prepaid game cards for like Warcraft, PlayStation or Xbox. Forget about it. Amazon doesn't want your excuse. I didn't like the game. Next, downloadable software like Microsoft Word, Coreldraw, Adobe Photoshop. Once you bought the software, they're yours forever. Whether you like it or not. Personal health items out of the package can also not be returned. And also insects. Yeah, I didn't know that. But you can actually buy insects on Amazon. Okay. If you happen to buy some creepy crawlies and they arrive dead or damaged, tough luck. Amazon's insect return policy is non existent. Yes, still to come, we have more of your phone calls, as well as a great way for you to track your local air quality using apps here on the Kim commando show.

T Mobile Spokesperson
Now at T Mobile, get four 5g phones on us and four lines for dollar, 25 a line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins, all on America's largest 5g network.

T Mobile Spokesperson
Minimum of four lines for 25, $25 per line per month with auto pay discount using debit or bank account, $5 more per line without auto pay, plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection. Charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire accounts and continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement. Due bill credits end if you pay off devices early. Ctmobile.com dot let's see.

Kim Commando
Lee in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi there, Lee.

Lee
My question for you is, are you staying cool?

Kim Commando
Oh, gosh, don't even. Okay. I bet you your next thing you're gonna say, oh, it's a dry heat in there in Arizona, right?

Lee
Oh, no.

I'm a retired 42 year air conditioning design engineer. I understand that there ain't no such thing as dry heat.

Kim Commando
So you know what I was thinking about the ac, guys? I mean, here in Phoenix, 117 degrees. Wow.

Nutso.

Lee
Yeah. That equipment is struggling.

Kim Commando
I can tell you. It's struggling at my house. It is.

It is.

Lee
So that's way be. That's way beyond our design. Typical design conditions.

Kim Commando
So what's going on, Lee?

Lee
Okay, well, I have got.

The question is about connecting multiple devices, multiple bluetooth, earphone type devices to one source. I've got a. I want to be able to have earphones in as to get some sound deadening as I'm driving a big old rv down the road. And I want my wife and I to be able to listen to the same, the same source.

And she has an iPhone 13.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S ten e, which, based on one of your newsletters, I've realized is obsolete. Yeah.

And then she has ipod pros, and I have some generic bluetooth buds. All right, so how do we connect all that stuff together?

Kim Commando
Well, first of all, kudos to your wife. I mean, she's the one who's styling the tech. I'm telling you, Lee, you're like an old man, okay? We need to move you into the century. Okay?

And so if you want to share, say, the music that's happening on her iPhone and she has airpods, by the way. You said ipods, but that's okay. I knew what you meant here.

Lee
I'm sorry.

Kim Commando
That's our Airpods pro. Just so everybody's like, not on the. We're all on the same page because somebody sitting there going like, I didn't know that you could have ipods in your ears. You know? So it's like, no, no, you can't do that. All right, so what you're going to do is that you were going to buy a set of Airpods. That's what you're going to do. And so this way with her, with her iPhone and her Airpods is that you just have to put in your airpods and then you go through a little bit of steps, which I don't want to give you here out on the air. Be happy to send them off to you.

And then you're just, at that point, you're just going to be both listening to the same thing, which I assume is the Kim Commando show, right, Lee?

Lee
Every time it's broadcast or live streamed. You bet.

Kim Commando
Okay, good. And just to remind you, you can also now get the Kim Commando show as a podcast, which we know, by the way, this is the first time that I've ever done this is released, the Kim Commando show as a podcast. And so in case you're always wondering, like, you know, how do I get the show as a podcast? Just in your favorite podcast player, just search for Kim Commando show. Kim Commando show. So here's the deal. So you're just going to go buy yourself some Airpod pros because that's what you want, okay? Either regular Airpods or the Airpods pro. Just get the pro because they have better tech, they're a little bit smaller and better noise cancellation. If you can wait until September, we are expecting a new version of the AirPods Pro coming out, but that's totally up to you.

Or you can, you can also, both of you buy Raycon earbuds, which, you know, Raycon is a sponsor of the show. Just want to let you know. So if you're in the market for some new earbuds and you're like, ah, man, I don't want to spend dollar 200 for Airpod Pros, is that you can go to buyraycon.com Kim. That's buyraycon.com Kim. And I'll tell you, the Raycon earbuds, you know, they are, they are pretty good. They're good and they're $70, 32 hours of listening time, so tremendous battery life. And again, not $200 or $70. And they are really on par, you know, with the Airpods. They really are. Again, buyraycon.com cam, or in your case, Lee, just go buy yourself a set of AirPods and you'll be good to go. Isn't that just so funny? I mean, think about this. Lee has like all old technology. His wife has pretty new technology.

I wonder what else they have, like old and new in their relationship.

Anyway, let's see. Jack in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Hi there, Jack.

Jack
I have a question about some of these streaming devices. You know, basic ones are the rookie and the fire stick and stuff like that. But a more advanced one is like, it's called the vc box, and it's got like hundreds of channels, particularly local channels and all. And it's got lots of movies and stuff like that access to. And I'm curious as to, I mean, they sell it on Amazon. Are there any drawbacks to getting a box like this?

Kim Commando
These are basically what's called a Cody box. Now, Cody is legal. It's a media player, and it can be used to access pirated content, which is illegal. Okay.

These boxes have been around forever, and they advertise, you know, free streaming of HBO and regional, national sports and local channels through heat servers and, you know, Netflix and whatever. Whatever they can get their hands on and all the latest movies.

Basically what you're doing is you are being a pirate, matey.

And normally it's. Right now, I think this. This one's coming from a chinese company that's distributing this.

Some of these movies are being recorded on handheld devices. Sometimes you may get malware on your home network because it is pirated content.

Just because they're sold on Amazon or Walmart or eBay or whatever doesn't mean that they're legal. They are 100% illegal. And typically what happens is that one box comes out and then they get shut down after maybe six months or twelve months in business, and then they pop back up with another brand, another name, whatever it may be. But it's basically the same box. And so it's like whack a mole. So you may get the box and it may work for a little bit. Is it going to work for the long haul? No, I wouldn't get one, Jack, and I don't recommend that anybody else does. Just stay away. And I know that stream is expensive. And if you're looking for ways to cut the cable and not spend a ton of money on streaming services, well, there are ways to do that. We've got lists of free places that you can get legitimate content, including your local library. And a lot of people are like, the local library? What is that about? Yes, they offer digital subscriptions. You've also got places like Crackle and Ub. And then don't forget, there are other services that you just have to watch, and you'll see some ads, and then you can just get free trials for the services that you do want to see. But we've got tons of information about all that great stuff on the website, Jack. So just say no. Just say no. And thanks for your call. Yeah, those boxes are just bad news. Just want to pass along that. If you are into podcasts for the first time ever, you can now get the Kim Commando show as a podcast. That's right, the first time ever.

And I'm talking about my big show, the weekend show. It's all 3 hours. So wherever you get your podcast, just search for Kim Commando show. Kim Commando show, which, by the way, you can get it commercial free or with commercials. Commercial free is going to be available on Apple and Spotify. The Kim commando show with commercials is available everywhere. Not to be confused with Kim Commando today. I know there's a lot of podcasts going on, but that's my podcast that I do@YouTube.com. kimcommando. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You see, you just can't get enough tech stuff. I know that.

All right, let's talk about your local air quality because you are what you breathe. Poor air quality cause all sorts of problems like asthma and allergies, heart disease and more.

The World Health Organization says that 99% of the world's population is living in unhealthy air. So if you're concerned, here are some apps for you to check out. First up is purple Air. This is super interesting to me. It gives you real time air quality data from sensors that are located all around the world. You can also set up specific alerts for locations, say your city or town. Another one is called Air now. This app is run by the us government, and it gives you real time air quality information on over 500 cities. And then you can also use Google Maps. Just open up Google Maps and search for your location and there you're going to see an air quality option right in the menu. Speaking of Google Maps, they're actually going to be feeding ads and Google Maps now, soon. Yeah, so as you're getting directions, you're going to start seeing some advertising.

Never stops. Hey, don't forget to tell a friend about the Kim commando show and also enter to win@winfromkim.com. dot this program is a copyrighted production of Westar multimedia entertainment and protected by the copyright laws. Any rebroadcast or use of this program for commercial, business, economic or financial purposes without the written permission of Westar multimedia entertainment. Strictly prohibited.

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1: Introduction to Digital Annoyances

2: Consumer Protection in the Digital Age

3: Real-Life Consequences and Solutions

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