Over 3,000,000 hotel rooms are at risk

March 22, 2024

Over 3,000,000 hotel rooms are at risk: Traveling soon? Ask your hotel if the room you’ll be in uses a Saflok lock. Hackers found a way to crack them in seconds. All they need is a keycard, a $300 RFID device (paywall link), and boom, they’re in. The company behind Saflok has been trying to fix this since 2022. Here’s what the locks look like.

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Reader question: 'I want cameras to watch my house when I'm gone, but not when I am home'

In times of crisis, it’s hard to get a clear view of the situation. That’s why irrefutable evidence is so valuable. Say a friend visits for a party, and your favorite vase is missing the next day.

Or maybe two family members get into a fight, and their stories contradict each other. You’ll have a hard time hammering down the facts. Security cameras can tell you what really happened when you have doubts. Tap or click here for five uses for security cameras you never thought of before now.

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Financial safety: Protect yourself from these emerging tax scams

It happens every year. We need to file our taxes, and scammers come out to steal from us. Here’s what you need to know right now.

Every year, the IRS releases a list of scams to watch out for. These are the biggest ones for this year:

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84% of government workers ‘repetitive’ tasks could be done by AI

The idea is that delegating “complex but repetitive transactions” to AI would simply free up humans to do other things. Sure … I smell budget cuts.

If you’re always misplacing things

When you drop an AirPod, Apple’s Find My feature helps you find it quickly. But for non-Apple earbuds — and all the rest of your Bluetooth gear — it’s not so simple.

That’s why you need a Bluetooth-finder app on your phone. It works a bit like a metal detector.

Pick your Bluetooth-using gadget (e.g., Raycons, Oura ring or Fitbit) from the list. The closer you get to it, the stronger the signal will be from the app. Ding-ding-ding! There’s your earbud — under the couch, right where you left it.

💡 Our IT genius, John, recommends this option for iPhone and this one for Android.

20 minutes of searching Facebook to buy an endangered monkey

In other words, it’s way too easy. Business Insider reported the listing (and others like it) to Meta, which took them down. A watchdog org says traffickers are “easily and openly operating on the platform.” It can’t be that hard to stop this stuff.

$61 monthly on streaming

Is what the average American spends. That’s up 27% from last year. Half of those surveyed said a $5 increase is enough to make them cancel. I just dropped a service we weren’t watching! Felt great.

$30,134.75 per video could be in North West’s pockets 

That’s if the 10-year-old daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West decides to monetize her TikTok account, which currently has 18.8 million followers. What a world.

94% of hospitals disrupted by a cyberattack

It was on a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary. The company said it’s paid out $2 billion in advances to providers while it rebuilds its payment claims systems. I’m not saying this wouldn’t have happened if they read this newsletter … but it probably wouldn’t have.

$495,000 for dinner in the stratosphere per person

SpaceVIP will soon offer dinners for six in a spacecraft 100,000 feet above Earth. I hope the place has some atmosphere.

A safe phone is a locked phone

If your phone locks after 10 seconds (too fast) or 2 minutes (too long), change that. I recommend 30 seconds — it’s ju-u-u-st right.

On iPhone: Go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock and choose a length of time.
On Android: Go to Settings > Display and look for a Timeout, Screen Timeout or Sleep option.