The internet is carding you

This episode is brought to you by Focus Features. On March 27th, Focus Features invite you to be a part of the most explosive movie of this year's Sundance and South by Southwest Film Festival.

The AI doc or how I became an apocalypticist is being called supremely entertaining and the most urgent movie of our time.

The AI doc or how I became an apocalypticist rated PG-13 only in theaters March 27th.

Hey there, it's Kim and welcome to the audio version of my daily tech newsletter, The Current, read by nearly a million people every single day.

Now let's get into today's newsletter for Wednesday, March 11th, 2026.

Now here's a quick question before we dive in. How many red notification bubbles are screaming at you right now? Your email, Instagram, text.

All of them doing their best impression of a toddler pulling on your sleeve.

But here's what you need to know. That little red circle was deliberately engineered to be irresistible and the trick was borrowed straight from Las Vegas.

We'll come back to that at the end because once you hear the answer, you will never look at your phone the same way again and you will sound incredibly smart at dinner tonight.

But here's the thing, that same psychology, the one that keeps you tapping that red dot without thinking is showing up everywhere in your tech life right now.

And today we're going to talk about one place. It's hitting you that nobody is warning you about.

Now let's get into our deep dive. You've heard about all these new laws meant to protect kids online, right?

25 states now require age verification to access social media or adult content on the internet. Sounds good on paper.

Here's what nobody's telling you. They don't stop the kids. They just collect your face. Researchers from the New York Center for social media and politics

tracked what happened after states started requiring age verification. Kids didn't stop scrolling.

They googled how to get around age verification downloaded a VPN and kept right on going. After Florida's law took effect, VPN demand shot up 1,150%.

The kids are fine. You're the one with a problem. Here's what actually happens when you hit one of those age verification screens.

You're not dealing with Instagram or TikTok. You're handing your government ID, your face scan, or both to a third party company,

the site quietly hired to handle the dirty work. Companies like Jumio and Secure. Oh, what? Never heard of them? You will now. These vendors collect your data.

Store it. Run it through AI facial recognition. And they are massive targets for hackers because they are sitting on identity documents for millions of people across hundreds of websites.

And this already went wrong. A women's safety dating app called T used one of these vendors and suffered a breach that exposed hundreds of ID photos and personal records. Not hypothetical. It happened.

Oh, and in some states, law enforcement can request the data these vendors collect. You verified your age to watch a YouTube video. And now your face isn't a compliance database.

So here's what to do when you hit one of these gates. Your only job is to give them as little as possible. If a selfie works, never upload your actual ID.

And before you do anything, spend 10 seconds Googling the vendor's name plus the word breach. That one habit alone could save you a lot of grief.

If the site gives you an Apple or Google account option instead, take it every time. That keeps your face out of a third party database entirely.

And if a site demands your full government ID, just to browse basic content, close the tab, hard pass.

Now, I've laid out the complete step-by-step roadmap for protecting yourself every time you hit one of these gates. It's all there in today's edition of the current, sitting right in your inbox. Open it up and lock this down.

And if you're not subscribed yet, signing up is completely free at GetKim.com. That's GetKim.com. You don't want to miss the deep dives or the step-by-step guides. I've got you.

Now, do you know someone who thinks these laws are actually keeping their kids safe online? Send them today's episode. They are going to want to hear this.

Because the truth is way more surprising than the headline. The law was supposed to protect your kids. Instead, it built a database of your face, run by companies you have never heard of.

Your kid cracked the work ground in 45 seconds. You handed over your driver's license. Turns out these laws didn't quite ID the real problem.

Now, before we get to the buzz around the web water cooler, here's something that made me put my phone down for a full minute when I read it.

A new study found that people who went two weeks without their smartphone saw their sustained attention jump. The cognitive equivalent of being ten years younger.

Ten years? Wow. Just from stepping away from the screen for two weeks. The average person checks their phone 186 times a day.

Imagine trying to read a book while someone taps you on the shoulder every five minutes. That's not an accident. That's a design decision.

We'll come back to exactly who made that decision at the end of today's show.

Now, let's talk about what's happening around the web today.

First up, the help desk heist. And listen, this one is a perfect example of exactly what we've been talking about.

Someone engineers a crisis, then swoops in as the solution while you're panicked and not thinking straight.

Here's how it works. Attackers flood your work email with spam until you're completely overwhelmed. Then they call you pretending to be corporate IT, offering to fix the very problem they just caused.

It's like a guy setting your kitchen on fire before handing you his business card for smoke detectors. Once they're in, they sneak malware in disguised as Microsoft team software.

From there, it's remote control, account takeover and your data walking out the front door. Watch out for this one.

Next, here is something that will make you feel better about every hour you've ever spent on YouTube.

In 2025, YouTube pulled in 62.3 billion dollars in revenue, beating Disney's 60.9 billion dollars.

More than half of YouTube viewing now happens on actual televisions. So the next time someone tells you YouTube is for teenagers,

you can politely remind them it just out-earned the entire Disney Empire. The couch potato is now the economy.

And this last one is genuinely one of my favorite stories of the week. Gen Z and millennials are putting their phones down and picking up Majong, bird watching, blacksmithing.

A New York City investment banker quit to run a needle point shop. Why? Because endless scrolling makes your brain feel like warm cottage cheese.

Real life stuff is like a palette cleanser. Your brain likes finishing things. Nothing says self-care like stabbing fabric 5,000 times on purpose. I love this so much.

Alright, before I forget, today's newsletter is packed with deals I handpicked myself.

We're talking a cordless vacuum, a fabric shaver that makes old clothes look brand new and a pest blaster kit that uses natural essential oils instead of harsh chemicals.

The links are all waiting for you in today's edition of the current right in your inbox. And if you want to browse everything I love and recommend your round, head over to Amazon.com slash shop slash Kim Commando.

That's Amazon.com slash shop slash Kim Commando. I add new picks all the time and everything there has my personal stamp of approval.

Okay, let's switch gears now and get into three quick device tips before we wrap up.

First one is the antidote to everything we've talked about today. Your phone is engineered to be colorful and stimulating on purpose. Every bright icon, every vivid thumbnail designed to pull your eyes in. Here's a 10 second fix.

On your iPhone, go to settings, then accessibility, then display and text size, then color filters and toggle it on. Your screen goes grayscale instantly. No color, no dopamine hit, no falling down a scroll hold. Turn it off at night when you want it to look nice.

Sounds drastic way less tempting. Trust me on this one. Second tip, your phone can find hidden cameras. Open your camera app and slowly scan a hotel room air B and B or changing room.

Hidden cameras with infrared lenses show up as a bright purple white glow on your screen. Your camera sees light. Your eyes simply cannot takes 10 seconds could save you a lot more than that.

And third, this one is just genuinely wild and I love it. You can turn your own handwriting into a font using Claude AI. Right out the alphabet numbers and punctuation on paper spaced out with no shadows.

Snap a photo and upload it to Claude. It converts it into a font file you can install on your computer and type in your own handwriting. Works in word, notes, anywhere. No special software needed. Wild.

I immediately thought of about five people I wanted to tell when I saw this one. Now here's your fun fact to close us out today. And this one ties everything together because earlier we talked about how your phone keeps pulling your attention back.

And then we talked about that study that showed just two weeks offline can make your brain feel 10 years younger. Well, here's the mechanism behind all of it.

The psychology term for that slot machine style reward loop is called intermittent variable reinforcement where sometimes you tap and get something good. Sometimes you get nothing. And somehow that makes you tap even more.

BF Skinner proved it with pigeons back in the 1950s random rewards create the most obsessive behavior not guaranteed rewards random ones your phones red notification dot is not a helpful reminder. It is a lever.

Built by people who absolutely red skinners research hired behavioral scientists and engineered your inability to leave a number sitting there unchecked Vegas figured this out first. And then Silicon Valley put it in your pocket. We are all the pigeon. I am definitely coup coup.

Alrighty folks that's all I have for you in today's audio edition of the current but just think about this you came in this morning with notification bubbles screaming at you and a face scanning gate between you and the internet. Hopefully you're leaving with a little more ammunition against the people who built both of those things. That's all I've ever wanted for you.

And if today's episode made you think of someone who's always the last to know when big tech is pulling a fast one that's what forwarding is for share this with them it's free it takes two seconds and honestly it might be the most useful thing you do for them today.

If you're not already getting the full newsletter head over to get Kim dot com that's get Kim dot com sign up for free and you'll get the complete deep dives the step by step guides and the daily deals I hand pick myself.

I'm always on your side cutting through the noise so you don't have to and I'll see you tomorrow friend stay safe tech ahead and maybe put the phone down for five minutes today your future self apparently 10 years younger will thank you.

Hey let me know what you think about these podcasts there's a special address podcast at commando dot com that's podcast with an s of course P O D C A S T S at commando dot com by the way couple people read those notes so make sure that you're always kind of nice again podcast at commando dot com let me hear from you.