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1 in 3 Americans Have Been Scammed Online Shopping: Here’s How to Protect Yourself A new report from the Pew Research Center, released in November 2025, confirms what many have suspected: online shopping scams are disturbingly common. Roughly one in three American adults say they have fallen victim to at least one online shopping scam. With holiday shopping already underway, this data is a timely reminder to slow down and check before you click. ...

The Best To-Do List Apps of 2026: What Wirecutter’s Review Tells Us (and What to Look For) Every year, The New York Times’s Wirecutter team puts dozens of task management apps through rigorous testing, and in December 2025 they published their updated picks for the best to-do list apps of 2026. Their review, like most Wirecutter guides, is thorough and worth reading if you have access. But even if you don’t, the underlying criteria and trade‑offs they evaluate can help you make an informed choice on your own. ...

1 in 3 Americans Were Scammed Online—Here’s How to Protect Yourself If you’ve ever clicked a tempting ad on social media or received an email about a deal that seemed too good to be true, you’re not alone. A new Pew Research Center survey, conducted in July 2025 and published this November, found that about one in three U.S. adults say they’ve experienced an online shopping scam. With holiday shopping ramping up, that number could rise. Here’s a breakdown of what’s happening and practical steps you can take to avoid joining that statistic. ...

MIT’s new method lets you train AI on your phone without sharing your data We’ve gotten used to a trade-off: smarter apps in exchange for shipping personal data to company servers. Your photos help organize your gallery, your typing improves autocorrect—but that data leaves your device, sometimes in ways you might not expect. A team at MIT has published a technique that could tip the balance back toward privacy, making it feasible to train AI models directly on your phone or smart speaker without ever sending raw data to the cloud. ...

Best To-Do List Apps for 2026: What Wirecutter Recommends At the start of a new year, many of us look for ways to get more organized. A good to-do list app can help, but with so many options, picking the right one is not straightforward. Task management tools vary widely in features, pricing, and—something people often overlook—how they handle your data. ...

Your Phone Could Soon Train Its Own AI — Without Sending Your Data Anywhere Every time you ask your phone’s voice assistant a question, or use a photo-editing app that suggests improvements, you’re relying on an AI model that was likely trained on other people’s data—often uploaded to a company’s servers. That setup works, but it comes with a trade-off: your personal data—photos, messages, voice recordings—may leave your device and end up in a data center somewhere. Researchers at MIT have been working on a way to keep that training local, and their latest method brings it closer to reality. ...

The 3 Best To-Do List Apps for Privacy in 2026 (Based on Wirecutter Tests) Wirecutter’s annual roundup of the best to-do list apps is a reliable starting point for anyone trying to stay organized. But as data breaches and corporate surveillance become routine, the question of how those apps handle your task data matters just as much as whether they have a clean interface or smart reminders. ...

Your phone could soon train AI models without sending your personal data anywhere Most people who use a smartphone today have experienced the trade-off: the more you let an app learn from your activity, the better it works—but that often means uploading your photos, messages, or location history to a company’s server. That data can be stored, analyzed, or even leaked. A new technique from MIT researchers could change that equation by making it possible to train AI models directly on your phone, without ever transmitting your raw personal data. ...

The Best To-Do List Apps of 2026, According to Wirecutter Intro A good to-do list app can make the difference between a chaotic day and one where you actually finish what you set out to do. But with dozens of task managers on the market, choosing the right one isn’t straightforward. Some apps excel at collaboration, others at speed. Some sync flawlessly across devices, while others lock key features behind subscriptions. And privacy practices vary more than you might expect. ...

MIT Shows How to Train AI on Your Phone Without Sharing Your Data Every time you use a smart keyboard, a voice assistant, or a health app that learns your habits, your personal data typically leaves your device. It travels to a cloud server, gets fed into a training model, and then—if you’re lucky—the company promises to delete it later. This arrangement works, but it exposes sensitive information to potential breaches, misuse, or simply to companies you may not fully trust. ...