Welcome to a wonderful Wednesday, friend. Looking to make bank in the tech world? OpenAI is building out its humanoid robotics department, which they call “embodied AI.” (Kinda creepy, huh?) Help wanted: An electrical engineer to cook up sensors; a mechanical engineer for the gears, actuators, motors and everything else that makes the bots move; and a technical lead to gather data and run testing. Each job pays up to $440,000 annually. That’s a lot, but my friend makes millions of dollars a day. He works at the Mint. Oof.

Zero, zilch, nada: My privacy secret weapon eliminated spam calls and texts on my phone. Silence feels so good. I negotiated a 60% discount just for you. More below! On to the tech smarts. — Kim

After a busy week, I love a long run or hike to clear my head. MapMyWalk and AllTrails are my go-to apps for tracking steps and finding new spots to hike. Bet you’ve got your favorites, too. And while you’re sweating it out, those apps are soaking up your data.

About 80% of the top fitness apps share your info with third parties. Don’t stress just yet; I’ve done the heavy lifting to keep your privacy safe.

Counting more than your steps

Fitness app makers aren’t helping you get in shape out of the goodness of their hearts. They make money selling your info to advertisers. Some are way more data-hungry than others.

🥇 Fitbit and Strava (tied): They collect nearly twice as much data as most fitness trackers. Fitbit shares your contact info and email usage data with advertisers. Strava gives away your precise location. Say a few days a week you leave your house, hit a nice trail nearby, stop for coffee and walk home. Anyone with access to that data knows exactly where you are. It’s happened to CIA agents, who have tracked down President Biden and others this way.

🥈 Nike Training Club: Coming in at a close second, this app collects all location data within a city block. It also shares details like your race, sexual orientation, disability status, religion and biometric data. Yikes!

🥉 Runna: Like Strava, it shares your precise location and any “user content” like your photos, videos and purchase history.

Time to check your app permissions

They tell your apps what they can or can’t access. Now, some apps need specific permissions to work correctly, like location info for tracking your run. Beyond the basics, it’s up to you.

Want to do a general sweep? Go to Settings > Apps, hit the gear icon (top left), then tap Configure Apps > App permissions.

✅ Pro tip: The Location Services feature lets you choose which apps can track you. Tap to set it to Always, While Using the App or Never. It’s your call; I give apps like MapMyWalk location access while I’m using it. Very few get the Always green light.

Old-school still works

I’ve heard from lots of you who want to get more active but don’t love the idea of staring at your phone even more or buying an expensive smartwatch. Pedometers aren’t as clunky as they used to be!

💪 Know anyone who needs this info? Use the nice, handy share icons to spread the know-how. One of my friends just canceled his gym membership. He called it his too-weak notice.

Here’s a number that’ll make you roll your eyes: Spammers are estimated to send out over 150% more texts year over year. We’re talking millions of junk texts sent every day. Curious where they get your info to begin with?

Your info can trade hands for less than the price of a cup of coffee. Data brokers and people-search sites hawk it to anyone willing to pay. And yes, it’s all legal as long they give you a way to opt out.

Here’s the trick: They make the opt-out process as difficult as possible and change it just when folks figure it out. My pro tip: Try Incogni. Create an account, then they'll scrub your personal info from the web. Goodbye, spam texts and calls.

💔 A woman sent $850,000 to “Brad Pitt”: A scammer posing as the actor hit her up on social media with love poems and selfies. Later, after she spilled about a hefty divorce settlement, the fake Brad said he needed money for cancer treatments and couldn’t access his cash because of his divorce from Angelina Jolie. This jerk even cooked up phony hospital photos and videos with AI. The woman knew it was fake when she saw pics of the real Brad happy and healthy with his new girlfriend.

🚨 Don’t reply to spam — ever: Hackers have a workaround to get phishing links past Apple’s iMessage security measures: Tricking you into replying. Links from unknown senders are disabled, so they send frantic texts about shipping issues or unpaid road tolls that push you to send “stop” or “yes.” The moment you respond, the link goes live and you’re screwed.

Red Note is No. 1 in the App Store: It’s kind of like Instagram but with a Pinterest-style layout and 300 million monthly active members. Why is it suddenly so popular? TikTok creators who are worried their audiences will evaporate with the possible ban don’t realize this app is also Communist China-owned, too. D’oh.

💊 He takes 54 pills a day: Tech millionaire Bryan Johnson, on a mission to reverse aging, figured out one of his daily supplements was actually making him older. The culprit was rapamycin, which comes with rough side effects like a higher resting heart rate and skin infections. Catch my podcast with Bryan here.

Free AI test drive: Nothing has changed our tech lives quite like AI. You need to start using AI in your small (or large) business before it’s too late. Take a free test drive of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure now at Oracle.com/kim.* You’ll be glad you did!

This is bad: Cops are using facial recognition to find suspects, and they’re sometimes skipping collecting other evidence before making an arrest. Case in point (paywall link): Christopher, a 29-year-old father, was wrongfully arrested for assaulting a security guard based on a blurry video still. It took more than two years to clear his name.

Wanna play a game? Meet Pdftris, the classic Tetris game packed inside a 60KB PDF, created by security analyst Thomas Rinsma. Hit this link to play it in your browser. It's not a visual masterpiece, but that’s part of the charm. There’s one for Doom, too. Heads-up: Don’t start downloading random PDFs; hackers love that trick.

Big Parkinson’s breakthrough: Delray Medical Center in Florida just introduced Exablate Prime, a tool designed for the fight against Parkinson's disease. It sends ultrasound waves to heat the brain areas that cause tremors. The tech is promising for patients with Alzheimer’s and chronic pain, too. There’s a year-long waitlist.

☕ Me espresso: Carol Chapman, aka “Grandma C,” is an 81-year-old TikTok coffee reviewer. She hit 1.1 million views trying pop star Sabrina Carpenter’s Brown Sugar Shakin’ Espresso at Dunkin. Even Sabrina responded with, “i love you grandma C 💋.” In a follow-up video, Grandma C was bopping to Sabrina’s music for the first time. Love her.

Warning: You’re going to want these.

🔗 Link to save: Same-day delivery on Amazon — for times you’re too sick, tired or lazy to leave the house.

Windows 10 and 11 update: Patch Tuesday is the monthly bug cleanup. This one fixes eight zero-day flaws and 159 others. Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and hit Check for updates.

📊 AI can format data how you want: The trick is knowing what to prompt. There are so many more types of charts than I remember in school. You can also ask ChatGPT, “What type of chart or graph would work more effectively to display this info?”

When the Netflix trailer spoils the ending: They autoplay without warning as soon as you open the app, like a Pandora’s box. Turn ‘em off. Click your account name > Manage Profiles, and press the pencil icon next to the profile you want to edit. Then, scroll to Autoplay Controls and uncheck Autoplay Previews While Browsing On All Devices.

📶 No bars: When your cell service is wonky, switch your phone to Airplane mode, wait a few seconds, then change it back. This will reconnect you to the nearest cell tower. Share that with a friend and they’ll think you’re a tech genius.

Be the smart one at work: Download NetSuite’s free knowledge e‑book, “The CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning.”* No matter what you do, you should know more about AI. It’s not going anywhere.

Strikethrough made simple: Need to cross out something in a Google Doc? On a PC, press Alt + Shift + 5. On a Mac, it’s Cmd + Shift + X. If you don’t like saving time, it’s in the Format menu under Text.

I love this! Hilligoss Bakery in Brownsburg, Indiana, uses two Commodore 64s from 1982 as cash registers.

Your tech term to know: Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the next big leap in AI, and OpenAI wants to get its robots there. Simply put, this means they’d be as smart as or smarter than humans. We're getting closer on the knowledge front, but the real magic happens when AI can think, reason and adapt like you and me. If you’ve used the AI-upgraded Siri on your iPhone lately, you’ll know we’re still a ways off from AGI …

😆 When will we know AI has become self-aware? Once it thinks its bot is too big. (You smiled, I know it!)

👉 Before you go: Incogni has removed my info from 908 different data-broker and people-search sites. I’ve tried doing this myself over the years, and I was happy if I got to a dozen. Incogni offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose. Use my link for 60% off. Now, on to the rest of a wild Wednesday! Hope yours is excellent. — Kim