What changed for your money today.

The most common AI scams are deepfaked investment pitches, business email fraud, romance schemes, fake job interviews and the cloned-voice call from a relative in trouble – and in 2025 they cost Americans $893,346,472 across 22,364 complaints. But the ranking is inverted from the coverage: investment pitches took $632 million of that, the cloned-grandchild call took $5 million. A gap of 126 to 1. First edition of our monthly read of what the FBI and FTC actually published: the fake IC3 website the FBI warned about in July, the recovery scams that target people who already lost money, and our count of all eleven FTC consumer alerts from August 2026 – four of the eight scam alerts describe money that started moving after someone clicked a paid ad.

Canceling ChatGPT Plus takes four steps and about thirty seconds. Getting the $20 back is a separate screen with a separate answer, and for an American the honest answer is usually no. We read five AI subscription refund policies in full on August 31, 2026 – OpenAI, Anthropic, Google One, Google Play and Microsoft. Between them they name 12 countries, two trading blocs, and exactly one U.S. state: New York. Here are the exact cancellation steps for web, iPhone and Android, the 24-hour rule that decides your next bill, who to ask for a refund depending on who billed you, and why the federal click-to-cancel rule people describe to each other is currently a request for comments.

The plan that costs $69.99 instead of $99.99 still exists. It is just filed behind a button labelled Cancel subscription, and Microsoft has quietly deleted the only page that explained it. On August 30, 2026 we followed that page’s own URL: it 301-redirects twice into a generic article where the word “Classic” appears exactly twice, both times inside a proration table. Here is the route, the five conditions that close it, and the one setting that decides whether the option appears at all.

Look for the small white light near the right hinge: a brief blink is a photo, a light that keeps blinking is video. Meta has now patched that light three times since 2024, and the newest fix only started rolling out on August 28, 2026.

Google AI Pro now includes YouTube Premium Lite in the US at no extra cost – not full Premium, which is $15.99 separately. Verified US college students can get AI Pro and full Premium together for $8.99, the same price everyone else pays for Lite alone. Every figure read on Google’s own pages, Aug. 29, 2026.

We recorded all nine page-one Google results for the phrase people actually type. One belonged to Amazon; three were blog posts on a book-review site. Then we read six official contact pages: the federal ones print a number, the platforms print a chat box.

Four different systems get called “Meta AI using my photos,” and the guides on page one answer them as if they were one. On August 27, 2026 we read those guides, then read Meta’s own privacy pages and the request form they send Americans to — which turns out to cover third-party data, not your photos. Two of the four have a real off switch. One has a request reviewed “consistent with your local laws.” One has nothing. And the sentence that actually removes a photo from future training is sitting in Meta’s documentation, unquoted.

You look for the data-center line on your bill and there isn’t one, so you assume the story was hype. It isn’t — the charge is folded three levels down, inside a line called something else. PJM’s capacity price rose elevenfold in three years, and its own market monitor blames data centers for 38% of the latest $16.4 billion. We ran that through ComEd’s published rate formula, checked the result against two of ComEd’s own disclosures, and got roughly $5.56 a month — about $67 a year. Here is where it hides, the four clicks that show you your household’s own number, and the research that argues the opposite.

The advice everyone repeats — listen for the pause, the flat tone, the missing breath — was written against 2023 technology. On August 26, 2026 we read all seven guides Google puts on page one for this question, then read the voice vendors’ own specification sheets. Four of the seven still teach the listening test. The vendors publish that pause at 75 milliseconds, against a human conversational gap of about 200. Here is why the ear no longer settles it, why an AI call still does not have to announce itself under federal rules, and the four checks that do work.

OpenAI answers this on its own help pages: a deleted chat is scheduled for permanent deletion within 30 days — unless it has already been de-identified, or must be kept for legal reasons. On August 25 we read seven of those pages and found the sentence that undoes the tidy version: to remove something ChatGPT knows, you must “delete every source where it appears.” Here are all seven stores, which ones the Delete button actually reaches, the order you have to clear them in so memory does not refill from your history, and the block of 2025 conversations no setting of yours can touch.

The advice you remember — count the fingers, watch the lips — is now the worst advice. YouTube started labeling AI videos automatically in May 2026, so on August 25 we took 17 videos that are AI-generated footage by their own title and read the disclosure panel on every one. Seven carried the label. Three showed only an auto-dubbing notice that looks exactly like one. Seven showed nothing at all — including a 4.3-million-view compilation with “Sora Ai” in its title. Here is what the label actually says, why its absence proves nothing, and the four checks that still work.

Amazon’s own help page answers this one: “You can’t turn off these ads.” On August 24 we read the current Echo Show documentation, wrote down the menu path Amazon actually uses now — Display & Appearance, not Home & Clock — and checked every Alexa+ plan for an ad-free tier. There isn’t one, at $139 a year or $19.99 a month. Here are the six switches that genuinely shrink what rotates past you, what each one costs you in weather and reminders, and why the ads grew in the first place.

Almost every guide promises the AI goes away if you follow the taps. On August 24 we read the actual help pages from Apple, Google, Samsung and WhatsApp for twelve places AI now shows up on a normal phone. Exactly one has a master switch that genuinely removes it. Google says outright that AI Overviews “cannot be turned off”; Samsung says some of its AI is built into the system. Here is the scorecard, what breaks when you flip each switch, and a ten-minute pass for a parent’s phone.

Free ChatGPT lost its message cap on August 10, and Plus quietly lost custom GPT creation on August 16. We read OpenAI’s own pricing page and help centre on August 23 and counted: the Free plan card says “Unlimited” once and “Limited” seven times. Here is the $0 vs $8 vs $20 math, including the row nobody prints — Go and Plus have the same context window.

It hit on August 5, 2026, at 6:35 UTC — 2:35 a.m. Eastern — at about 5,400 mph, and left a crater roughly 60 feet wide. NASA published the pictures on August 18. Here is what actually happened, why the viral video of it is fake, and the one number nobody printed.

Nevada approved 7,000 robotaxis for Las Vegas on Aug. 20. None of them can pick you up at Harry Reid, because airport access is a separate authorization nobody has yet. Here is what you can actually ride this weekend, and what it costs.

No — it is a $10-a-month perk, not a free one. We read Verizon’s own terms and found two ways to end up paying twice, plus seven other US AI offers verified on Aug. 22, 2026.

The FTC says social media platforms don’t always vet the ads you see, and Meta says its own ad review is largely automated. Here are five provenance checks that take about 90 seconds, and the number that shows which ads actually take the money.

ChatGPT now guesses your age from four behavioral signals – and when it isn’t sure, it guesses teenager. What the age check actually reads, and the four steps to undo a wrong call.

Microsoft patched a Critical Copilot flaw on Aug. 18 and said users need do nothing. That is true about the hole – and it leaves out the part about memory. What your assistant is actually plugged into, and the four screens worth opening once.

Hurricane Lala’s center never crossed the Hawaii coastline, so no landfall was ever recorded. The Big Island still got 43.55 inches of rain and its worst storm damage since 1871. What the terms actually mean — and which one you should be reading.

List price is about $20 a month. A student pays nothing, a Verizon household pays $1.67 a head, and only one profile genuinely needs to spend more. The job-by-job budget, with every discount verified Aug. 20, 2026.

Google just gave US college students a free year of its $19.99 AI plan. Verizon sells the same plan for $10. And the free Perplexity year everyone still recommends expired eight months ago. Verified Aug. 20, 2026.

OpenAI’s CFO says 2027. Employees cashed out about $7 billion this month. You still cannot buy a single share — why, what the pre-IPO offers really are, and the one filing that changes everything.

Model prices fell again this summer; the $20 plan did not. Here is the arithmetic on paying per token versus paying per month, with every price read off the vendor pages on August 19, 2026 – and the resend effect most comparisons miss.

The world’s biggest humanoid robot maker opened up 629% in Shanghai and closed worth about $50 billion. What it actually sells, why most Americans can’t buy the stock, and what the FCC’s July robot ban did and didn’t do.

OpenAI’s own pricing page flags the $8 Go plan for ads, not the free one. Here is what each ChatGPT tier costs a year, the three free ways to see fewer ads, and what the ad-free upgrade really buys — all read off the vendor’s pages on August 18, 2026.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches Aug. 30 with a mirror the same size as Hubble’s – and a view 100 times wider. What it does, how it differs from James Webb, and whether it was ever really cancelled.

Servicers are moving 7.5 million borrowers off the SAVE Plan on a 90-day clock. Here is what RAP and IBR would actually cost you, the bracket cliff that makes a $1 raise expensive, and the July 1, 2028 date that Parent PLUS borrowers cannot miss.

At 8 a.m. on August 17 — three weeks before the Atlantic’s peak — the National Hurricane Center said no storm would form for seven days. Here is the El Niño math behind the quiet, the record NOAA now sees coming, and why quiet is not the same as safe.