The Internet has led to a huge increase in credit card fraud. Your card information could even be for sale on an illegal website. Websites offering cheap goods and services should be regarded with care. Online shoppers who enter their credit card information may never receive the goods they bought. The thieves then go shopping with your card number or sell the information over the Internet.

Computer hackers(黑客) have broken down security systems, raising Questions about the safety of cardholder information. 25, 000 customers of CD Universe, an online music retailer(批发商), were not lucky. Their names, addresses and credit card numbers were posted on a website after the retailer refused to pay the ransom(赎金) to get back the information.

Credit card firms are now fighting against online fraud. However, there are a few simple steps you can take to keep from being cheated.

Shop only on secure sites: send your credit card information only if the website offers advanced secure system.

If the security is in place, a letter will appear in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. The website address may also start with “https: / / ”-the extra “s” stands for secure. If in doubt, give your credit card information over the telephone.

Keep your passwords safe: most online sites require a user name and password before placing an order. Treat your passwords with care.

Students from low income families have the difficulties against them. Many are first generation Americans whose families are keeping the wolf from the door-and international travel isn't even a consideration. Afar, a media and travel company, is working to change that. Its program Learning Afar, which launched in 2009, sends high school students from underserved communities abroad to learn about things like sustainability（持续性）and community-building.

Afar cofounder Joe Diaz said the core belief behind the program is that travel is the best form of education.

The program started when' 20 students, 10 from Yonkers, New York, and 10 from Oakland, California, traveled to Costa Rica. Since then, it has sent 613 students and 79 educators to six countries 63% of the students are first generation Americans and 93% are on free or reduced lunch programs. Diaz believes that giving students the opportunity to “travel in a deeper way” will finally improve the country.

The trips last between 8 and 15 days, depending on the destination and the funding, which comes from Afar and by corporate and individual donations.

The company begins by identifying a school in a low income area. Students apply and are chosen based on factors like advantages, need, passion and diversity. But they're not looking for straight-A students, but, rather, applicants that express the desire to participate and a strong interest in the world around them.

Diaz said one of the program's goals is that students will form bonds that continue when they return to their schools, creating a ripple effect（连锁反应）throughout the student body. Diaz said this happened with a group of Chicago students who traveled to Costa Rica and learned about the problems associated with littering. When, they returned, they created a school-wide campaign focused on dealing with waste. And the program's benefits extend beyond just high school. Diaz said 100% of Learning Afar participants have graduated from high school, which is remarkable, considering that graduation rates in their schools are closer to 50%.

Even if you aren’t into artificial intelligence, it’s time to pay attention to ChatGPT, because this one is a big deal. ChatGPT is an AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can accomplish.

ChatGPT is built on top of the OpenAI GPT-3 family of large language models. It lets you type in natural-language prompts and then offers conversational replies. It remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. It finds relevant information in its oceans of training data, and changes that into plausible-sounding(貌似有理的) paragraphs of text.

You can ask it countless questions and often will get an answer that’s useful. For example, you can ask it encyclopedia questions like, “Explain Newton’s laws(定律) of motion.” You can tell it, “Write me a poem.” and when it does, say, “Now make it more exciting.” You can ask it to write a computer program that’ll show you all the different ways you can arrange the letters of a word.

A few days after its launch, more than 1 million people were trying out ChatGPT. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated in February 2023 that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users in January, accomplishing in 2 months what took TikTok about 9 months and Instagram two and a half years.

Many people fear that ChatGPT might help students cheat better. But as with many other technology developments, it’s not a simple black-and-white situation. Decades ago, students could copy encyclopedia entries and use calculators, and more recently, they’ve been able to use search engines and Wikipedia. ChatGPT offers new abilities for everything from helping with research to doing your homework for you absolutely.

Dustin York, an associate professor of communication at Maryville University, hopes educators will learn to use ChatGPT as a tool and realize it can help students think critically.

“Educators thought that Google, Wikipedia, and the Internet itself would ruin education, but they did not.” York said, “what worries me most are educators who may actively try to discourage the acknowledgment of AI like ChatGPT. It is a tool, not a villain(恶棍).”