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Big Tech's danger to kids finally aligns Democrats, Republicans
Big Tech's danger to kids finally aligns Democrats, Republicans
More than once over the course of a five-hour hearing before Congress on Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's parenting style became a point of focus for angry lawmakers. One House Republican asked if he had issues with his young daughters watching YouTube. Another asked if he lets them use Facebook's own services.
"My daughters are five and three, and they don't use our products," Zuckerberg said, before adding that he lets his older child use Facebook's chat app for kids.
The exchange typified a common refrain as the leaders of Facebook, Google and Twitter weathered a grilling from Congress -- the fourth such event in the last year where a Big Tech CEO took the hot seat -- over the misinformation that flows through their platforms. While lawmakers tried to advance their disparate agendas, one bipartisan theme emerged among Democrats and Republicans who are usually bitterly divided: the danger of Silicon Valley's services on children.
"Big tech is essentially handing our children a lit cigarette and hoping they stay addicted for life," said Rep. Bill Johnson, an Ohio Republican. Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat from Florida, peppered the CEOs with statistics that show a rising level of depression and suicidal thoughts among adolescents that coincides with the rise of social media.
Historically, Big Tech products have been reserved for people 13 and older. But in the past few years, companies like Google and Facebook have tried to push the bounds of those limits, creating services for younger and younger kids. (Twitter, primarily used by older users, evaded scrutiny on the issue.)
YouTube Kids, launched in 2015, is billed as a child-safe version of the massive Google-owned site. Last month, Google said it's testing new parental controls for kids 9 and up to use the full scale version of YouTube. Facebook four years ago unveiled a version of its Messenger chat app for kids to talk to their parents and friends. Now, the social network is working on a version of Instagram for kids under 13.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he doesn't let his young daughters use the company's products, except Messenger for Kids.
Screenshot by Sarah Tew/CNET
Technical issues like content moderation or the opaque advertising model of social networks are hard concepts to grasp, so lawmakers have glommed on to an issue that's more visceral and universal in nature: the safety of our children. It isn't a topic that the tech executives can easily swat away.
Even tech luminaries have sounded the alarm. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates talked about raising their kids with limited tech. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has recently feuded with Facebook, has said he doesn't want his nephew on a social network.
"These hearings reflect an emboldened Congress and a tech industry that's on the defensive because the companies know that serious regulation and legislation is coming," said Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a child advocacy nonprofit. "No one is going to take Mark Zuckerberg seriously as a voice for parents, but the truth is our kids lives are being dramatically shaped by social media and internet platforms."
Silicon Valley companies have received blowback in the past when they've waded into kids products. YouTube Kids faced controversy in 2017 when the service's filters failed to recognize some videos that feature disturbing imagery but are aimed at children -- like Mickey Mouse lying in a pool of blood, or PAW Patrol characters bursting into flames after a car crash. Facebook's Messenger for Kids, meanwhile, suffered a bug in 2019 that let children join group chats with strangers.
Critics accuse Google and Facebook of skirting the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, a federal law that regulates user data collection from sites with users who are under 13 years old. In 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission slapped the company with a record $170 million fine, as well as new requirements, for YouTube's violation of COPPA. In response, the video site made major changes to how it treats kids videos, including limiting the data it collects from those views.
The pushback from Congress on Thursday comes as lawmakers have drafted other legislation that deals with Silicon Valley's treatment of kids.
In September, Castor introduced the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act, in the House. This bill banned "auto-play" sessions on websites and apps geared for children and young teens. The legislation also banned push alerts targeting children and prohibited platforms from recommending or amplifying certain content involving sexual, violent, or other adult material, including gambling or "other dangerous, abusive, exploitative, or wholly commercial content."
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, who asked Zuckerberg if his kids use Facebook products, has introduced the Big Tech Accountability Platform, which is a road map for how Republicans are approaching regulating the tech industry. While Republicans are still concerned about the censoring of conservative voices online, they also are concerned with how the big platforms use their algorithms "to drive addiction," as well as the role the companies play "in child grooming and trafficking."
"Remember, our kids -- the users -- are the product," McMorris said Thursday. "You -- Big Tech -- are not advocates for children. You exploit and profit off them."
Bipartisan Bill Would Compel Google to Break Up Its Ad Business
Bipartisan Bill Would Compel Google to Break Up Its Ad Business
What's happening
A group of senators introduced a new bill that would force Google to break up its online ad business if it's passed into law.
Why it matters
The bill is a threat to Google's primary revenue source and could up-end its business model.
What's next
The bill has a long way to go and there's no guarantee it will be passed into law, especially during an election year.
A bipartisan bill designed to break up Google's massive online ad business has been introduced in the US Senate.
The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act, introduced Thursday, would prevent companies processing more than $20 billion in digital ad transactions annually from engaging in ad sales, according to the text of the legislation. The bill would force Google to divest its digital ads business within a year if passed.
The bill targets companies like Google that operate in multiple parts of the online ad economy, which senators say is a conflict of interest. Ad sales on its giant Search product is a pillar of the $209 billion in revenue that Google raked in last year. The company also helps third-party advertisers sell and purchase ads online and runs auctions at which ads are sold.
"When you have Google simultaneously serving as a seller and a buyer and running an exchange, that gives them an unfair, undue advantage in the marketplace, one that doesn't necessarily reflect the value they are providing," Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who is leading the bill, told The Wall Street Journal. "When a company can wear all these hats simultaneously, it can engage in conduct that harms everyone."
In a statement, Google said that its ad tools, along with those from its competitors, help American businesses grow and protect customers from privacy risks or misleading ads. "Breaking those tools would hurt publishers and advertisers, lower ad quality, and create new privacy risks," a Google spokesperson said. Google says that "low-quality data brokers" will flood the net with "spammy ads" and that this bill is the "wrong bill, at the wrong time, aimed at the wrong target."
In a press release, Lee and other senators called Google's business model a "tax on thousands of American businesses, and thus a tax on millions of American consumers."
The bill is the latest in a string of legislative proposals designed to limit the power of Big Tech. A package of five bills, including the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and Ending Platform Monopolies Act, directly target Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook parent Meta.
If some or all of these bills were to pass, it would give Congress substantially more power in dealing with the massive tech industry, which is widely seen as lightly regulated.
The bill is co-sponsored by Texas Republican Ted Cruz and Democrats Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Similar legislation is set to be introduced in the House, according to The Journal.
The new legislation comes at a tricky time for Congress. Mid-term elections that could tip control to the Republicans take place in November. Opportunities to get a floor vote time might be limited.
Google is also facing lawsuits that accuse it of monopoly control of online ad sales. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a coalition of 16 states and Puerto Rico in suing the search giant for allegedly controlling the online ad market. Google has said Paxton's allegations are inaccurate and asked a judge to dismiss the case.
Paxton has also filed a privacy lawsuit against Google. On Thursday, he amended it to include a claim that Google's Chrome browser tracks sensitive user data even when it's in incognito mode. A proposed class action lawsuit, Brown et al v. Google LLC, alleges that Google's Chrome browser collects data while in that private browsing mode.
When Local Newspapers Fold, Polarization Rises. Here's What You Can Do
When Local Newspapers Fold, Polarization Rises. Here's What You Can Do
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rising energy costs and our ongoing struggles with the coronavirus pandemic take up a lot of our attention these days. But there's more going on a lot closer to home -- you just might not know it, because your local newspaper is gone.
More than a quarter of hometown newspapers have disappeared in the last century, leaving about 70 million Americans with little or no way to stay informed about their city and county governments, schools or businesses. As the country heads toward the 2022 midterm elections, Americans are increasingly turning to friends and social media to stay informed -- which isn't always trustworthy, as we learned during the 2016 election when around 44% of Americans were exposed to disinformation and misinformation through untrustworthy websites.
"The state of local news in America is dire," said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and head of the Medill Local News Initiative.
Local journalism isn't just a nice idea. Community newspapers report some of the most important stories in our country. That includes the Boston Globe's 2002 series exposing the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston's sex abuse of minors, Sara Ganim and The Patriot-News' coverage revealing Penn State sex abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky and the Charleston Gazette-Mail's 2017 expose on opioids flooding into West Virginia.
This is part of Citizen Now, a package that aims to empower readers with information about our changing world.
CNET
But for every Pulitzer Prize-winning local journalism story, there are countless more that have served as chroniclers of their communities and watchdogs of the people in power. And when they aren't there, research from the Brookings Institute found there's generally more government waste and fraud.
"When you have less local news, there's various effects, some of which you'd find predictable: lower voting turnout, more corruption, more waste," said Steven Walden, president and co-founder of Report For America, a nonprofit that funds young reporters to work in understaffed newsrooms throughout the US. "There's also evidence that you have more polarization and misinformation."
The journalism industry has been struggling to adapt. Advertising, once a vital part of the newspaper world, has shifted to online. Meanwhile, profit-hungry newspaper owners have chosen to lay off staff and reduce the quality of their products.
Nonprofit organizations have stepped up to support newsrooms in several ways, but ultimately, they live or die by their communities. Many local papers and radio stations depend on individual donations to fund reporting that would never be done by larger publications, covering civic meetings and investigating local issues that lead to exposés which fix injustices. Even simply signing up for and reading local news draws people closer to issues that affect them -- and reinforces what publications do.
"Most of these stories weren't big but they mattered immensely to the residents in a community larger outlets didn't regularly cover," said Greg Yee, now a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, speaking about his year writing for the Farmington Daily Times in Farmington, New Mexico. (Full disclosure: Yee is a former colleague of this article's author.) Stories that stick out from that time include a mobile home park cut off from natural gas in winter and a new gas station opening in a Navajo Nation community, the only fuel access in 30 miles, that significantly improved locals' quality of life.
"A good local news organization is a problem solver: it identifies problems and helps a community come together to solve it," said Penelope Abernathy, visiting professor at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, who heads a site dedicated to mapping news deserts, areas with one or zero local papers. "And a good news organization shows you how you are related to people you may not know you're related to in another part of the county, region or state."
The Washington Post / Getty Images
Long, withering decline
Journalism jobs have been shrinking for decades, driven by declining newspaper circulation and the rise in digital advertising. The news industry's advertising and subscription businesses have roughly halved over the past decade. Much of that money's shifted to Google, Facebook and Amazon, which together now hold 64% of the US online advertising market.
For newspapers, that shift in spending is catastrophic. In the decade after the great recession in 2009, the Pew Research Center found newspaper newsroom employment in the US had dropped by more than half, to about 35,000 workers.
Ironically, the news industry has more readers than ever before – upwards of 10 times as many, according to Danielle Coffey, vice president and general council of the News Media Alliance.
"We don't have a broken product. It's being consumed at exponential rates," she said. "The source of the problem is the revenue problem."
It wasn't always this way.
The founding fathers believed so strongly in newspapers as a public good that they set up government subsidies for postal rates, reducing the cost of distributing the news – which at the time, was delivered on horseback.
In the 1960s and '70s, though, publicly traded paper owners began fixating on profits. To impress shareholders, news organizations conglomerated into big chains that gobbled up local papers into regional networks, said Amanda Lotz, professor of the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University.
"The financialization pressure really moves [newspapers] away from the balance between a commercial and public service enterprise of providing news to a community," Lotz said.
Rounds of acquisitions resulted in the gutting of editorial budgets and staff. With fewer reporters, newspapers started relying on national stories published by wire services, a trend that created "ghost papers" that had little or no local content. Meanwhile, the internet became an easy substitution for things online that had until then been exclusive to the paper, like weather, sports scores, classifieds and even news.
Venture capitalists and other financial firms began buying up newspapers in the 1980s but rapidly accelerated in the last two decades, growing to own over 23% of US newsrooms today while wringing out profits with more layoffs.
"Those losses put more strain on already stretched newsrooms and the publications ended up churning through staff," said Yee, who worked for four years at a pair of newspapers owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. "All of that translates into worse, inconsistent coverage of the communities they're trying to serve."
As a result, from 2004 until the start of the pandemic in 2020, the US lost a quarter (around 2100) of its newspapers, according to a report from the University of North Carolina's Hussman School of Journalism and Media. By the end of last year, another hundred were gone, Poynter reported, expanding news deserts that are mostly located in financially-impacted rural areas in the country's interior.
Some papers have tried to rely more heavily on subscriptions, while transitioning to mainly digital publishing. Some success stories include the Chattanooga Times Free Press, which has been operating since 1869. Last September, it switched to a daily digital edition and a single print edition on Sunday from a daily print edition. The publication spent $6.1 million to give all its monthly subscribers iPads and train them one-on-one how to use them to access their daily paper, and it's retained subscribers through the transition.
"There are some real success stories in this transition. If you can lower your paper costs and your distribution costs and if you can attract enough digital subscribers, you can support a local newsroom on that. But many local news organizations are still getting a significant chunk of their revenue from print advertising," Medill's Franklin said.
Bloomberg / Getty News
Legislative fix, maybe
One way the news industry could regain revenue and profit is to seek compensation from big tech platforms. After all, advocates say, Facebook, Google, Twitter make money selling ads next to links, videos and photos published and shared freely to their networks.
Legislators in Australia were the first to pass a law in February 2021 requiring Google and Facebook to negotiate with publishers for compensation to use their work, while France followed with its own legislation shortly thereafter. The latter locked horns with Google before finally securing legal assurance that the search giant would pay local media outlets when they appear in search results. Critics like the Electronic Frontier Foundation lament that the Australian and French laws ensured deals for big media publishers at the expense of smaller ones, but that hasn't stopped Canada and the UK from gearing up to pass their own versions.
A version of that idea in the US, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, was proposed in March, 2021 by Senators Amy Klobuchar, Rand Paul, Cory Booker, and Lindsey Graham -- a rare bipartisan effort. The bill would allow news organizations to collectively bargain with tech companies for compensation, but hasn't moved out of committee yet.
Another idea to fund journalism Is the Local Journalism Sustainability Act introduced a year ago in the House by Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick and Dan Newhouse. That bill, if it were to become law, would give newsrooms around $50,000 annually in tax breaks to hire reporters. Small businesses, meanwhile, would receive $5,000 for the first year to advertise in local papers, and Americans would get a $250 stipend to pay for news subscriptions. It's unlikely to pass, though, in part because of partisan bickering over other spending plans on Capitol Hill.
"We need to make sure these publications can sustain themselves through this crisis and beyond, and I believe the credits in this bill make significant progress in providing a pathway to that sustainability," Rep. Kirkpatrick said when announcing the bill.
Nonprofit newsrooms
Some news organizations are finding funding beyond ads and subscriptions. Nonprofit foundations and philanthropic organizations are funneling grants and other aid money to newsrooms, including a new wave of nonprofit publications, like ProPublica, which run mostly on foundation and individual donations.
The American Journalism Project is a self-described venture philanthropy firm that to date has raised $90 million to back 32 local nonprofit newsrooms. Founded in 2019, it's also helped launch four more, taking the startup incubation model and applying it to digital newsrooms.
The organization focuses on both funding newsrooms and guiding them toward self-sustainability by diversifying their revenue streams, said Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project. Newsrooms they've helped grow by around 67% in their first year and are projected to double their revenue in three years.
"Will local news only be nonprofit? No. Is nonprofit news vital for the future of an informed citizenry? We think so," Berman said.
Report For America, founded in 2017, describes itself as a service organization, which helps pair young reporters fresh out of college with legacy newsrooms. The organization financially supports the reporter by paying half their salary (up to $25,000) the first year, then a third (up to $20,000) the following year. After that, it's up to the publication to decide whether to hire them permanently.
"If you're not in New York or Boston or Washington, some of these news organizations have trouble getting people to go out to smaller towns," said Report For America's Waldman. "We have a very significant recruiting operation and are able to create a sort of self-selected group of people who are really passionate about local."
Report For America has grown its graduating class to 130 reporters this year, up from its first class of 13 in 2018 -- to date, over 560 reporters have gone through the program and partnered with local newsrooms. They include Laura Roche of the Charlotte News & Observer writing about the fraught debate over museums returning the unethically sourced remains of Black people, Sierra Clark of the Traverse City Record-Eagle writing about Melissa Isaac and many others in her Anishinaabek Neighbors series, and Brandon Drenon of the Indianapolis Star writing about the NAACP and others criticizing Indiana schools for failing Black students.
Report for America also connects newsrooms with donors in their area in an effort to get the community more involved in funding its local news again.
"Our goal is to actually help change the local business models in a way that they can sustain that," Waldman said.
The nonprofit Knight Foundation pledged to give $300 million to news organizations in 2019, some of which will go to both the American Journalism Project and Report For America, among other nonprofits that in turn support local newsrooms -- efforts that can be seen city by city on this interactive map. The flow of financial support is important for local newsrooms that operate on nonprofit and for-profit models, which are both valuable to their communities, said Jim Brady, vice president of the Knight Foundation's journalism program.
"Nonprofits tend to be more investigative or enterprise in nature, and the for-profits tend to provide more information on how consumers can live their daily lives. So we think both must be part of the answer to how local news can thrive," Brady said.
An infographic from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media's project website, The Expanding News Desert, headed by Penelope Abernathy.
UNC Hussman
What to do if you don't have local journalism
News experts have advice for what to do if you live in a news desert, with little or no coverage. First on the list: Stop thinking that social media posts are an informative replacement for reporting. Social media can help people know what's going on, but it's rife with bias and misinformation.
"There's a proliferation of misinformation and disinformation that goes unchecked because there's no local journalist checking on the facts. [Social media is] a place where unvetted gossip can get spread," Franklin said.
People need to learn to spot misinformation that's spread on social media by publications that look like they're trustworthy but aren't. Both the World Health Organization and the Poynter Institute have their own free online courses to learn how to fact-check posts yourself -- not just to spot fake news, but also to understand the agenda behind why they're spreading in the first place.
In the voids left by local papers, citizen journalists and bloggers have stepped up to provide their communities with informative coverage, but they lack the oversight and vetting a newsroom provides. For lack of better options, a citizen reporter could start a site on Substack and write about local events, Franklin suggested.
The best thing to do is to reach out to regional papers the next town over and request coverage. You can find your nearest local or regional paper on Newspapers.com or NewspaperMap.com. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has a station finder site too, and if you're a fan of National Public Radio, you can sign up to become a member of your local station in order to help support it. It isn't a perfect solution for an existing newsroom to stretch to cover another area, but is far better than starting a new local publication from scratch.
But if your community decides to launch a new publication, organizing it as a nonprofit newsroom is a successful way to go. They rely on donations -- foundation support and individual giving account for a combined 83% of nonprofit revenue, according to the Institute of Nonprofit Newsrooms' 2021 Index. And that model is working: 83 of the over 400 nonprofit newsrooms affiliated with INN are less than five years old.
Then there's nonprofit newsroom Berkeleyside, which hosted the so-called first 'direct public offering' where it solicited a combined $1 million in funding from 355 of its readers (an average of $2,816 per person) in 2018 to get started. These are technically securities, but sold directly to its readers, and the publication continues to publish today. It's one of many ways newsrooms are innovating new ownership structures to stay solvent.
"We need to get more support from communities, from local community foundations, from national media foundations and from high net-worth individuals to help make local news sustainable in all areas of the country," Brady said.
Correction, June 28: The original version of this story incorrectly stated how many reporters were in Report For America's first graduating class. Its first graduating class of reporters was in 2018 and had 13 members.
How to Pick Your First Credit Card to Start Building Credit
How to Pick Your First Credit Card to Start Building Credit
Applying for your first credit card can involve a considerable learning curve. With hundreds of card options, lots of jargon and navigating the complexity of the US credit system, there's a lot to learn at once. And once you understand it, it can seem counterintuitive. For example, how are you supposed to build credit to get a credit card if nobody will issue you a card without credit history? It can be dizzying, to say the least.
Still, there are many reasons to want a credit card, chief among them is the ability to build credit history and improve your credit score. Your credit score, a three digit-number that represents your creditworthiness, can affect everything from whether you are approved for an apartment, your interest rates for auto loans and a mortgage and how many financial options you will have in the future.
Below, we review everything you need to know before applying for a credit card: the basics of how credit cards work, how to pick the right card for you, how to apply and how to use your card to build credit.
Read more: Best Debit Cards for College Students
The basics: How credit cards work
First, credit cards are not free money, sadly. What they are is a financial tool that, when used responsibly, lets you space out payments for purchases, build credit history and, in some cases, earn rewards like cash-back or airline miles. But credit cards can be extremely easy to misuse if you accidentally charge more than you can afford to pay back by the end of your billing statement. And if you miss payments, you risk crashing your credit and racking up interest charges.
The best way to avoid these pitfalls is to understand how credit cards work. Credit card issuers, typically a bank or credit union, will lend you a certain amount of money called credit, which you agree to repay. Payment processing networks, like Mastercard or Visa, act as the middleman and help facilitate payments and benefits.
Every card has a credit limit, which is the highest amount of money you can borrow in total. Your credit limit is usually determined by your credit score, income and the credit card issuer. So if you're applying for your first card and don't have a long credit history, you will probably be given a lower credit limit. Once you show responsible card use (paying balances on time and/or in full), you can request a credit limit increase.
At the end of the billing cycle -- which usually lasts about a month -- the credit card company will send you a bill that lists all your purchases made with the card. You can pay either the minimum payment that's due or pay off the bill in full. While paying the minimum payment will keep your account in good standing, the remaining unpaid balance will carry over to the next month, and you'll likely start accruing interest charges on any unpaid balance. Every card has its own annual percentage rate (APR), which is the total amount of interest and fees it charges on unpaid balances.
If you miss the payment due date, you may incur late fees, adding even more dollars to your debt. It's in your best interest to avoid this scenario by only charging what you can afford and paying your bill in full each month. Fees and interest charges can add up quickly and prevent you from paying off your debt as quickly.
How to pick the right credit card
With hundreds of credit cards available, picking the right credit card for you will depend on your current financial status, your future financial goals and your lifestyle. Many credit cards come with rewards like welcome bonuses, cash-back offers, discounts on certain purchases and travel points or airline miles. Cards with rewards typically come along with annual fees -- a yearly expense you pay to own the card -- though some do not.
The right card for you depends on your financial situation and goals. If you're just starting out, building credit with a student or secured credit card -- one that requires a security deposit that acts as your credit limit -- can help you build credit. If you're looking to earn rewards, look for a card with the most relevant perks for your spending habits and an annual fee you can recoup from your rewards.
Some credit card companies will solicit you directly or allow you to see if you are preapproved for a card. Since card companies run a hard check on your credit when you apply for a card, a move that can temporarily cause your credit score to dip, preapproval lets you see if you're likely to be approved before you apply. Preapproval doesn't guarantee you'll be approved -- it just means the credit card company thinks you're a good applicant for a particular card.
For those currently in school, there are specific credit cards made for students. These cards usually have a smaller credit limit, and may have a scaled-down combination of benefits and fees compared to traditional credit cards. Student cards usually have relaxed credit requirements, since many students don't have a significant credit history, thus making it easier to get approved.
A secured card is another option for those with no or low credit, looking to boost their credit score. Secured credit cards require a security deposit that acts as your credit limit. It is also a form of collateral, ensuring that the card balance will be paid even if you miss payments.
How to apply for your first credit card
Once you determine which card is best for you, you can begin the application process. While every credit card company has its own application, you will probably be asked to provide similar personal and financial information, like your name, age, employer, annual income and housing payment. With this information, the credit card issuer will run a credit check on you to decide if you fit the criteria for card approval.
After you apply, you will either be approved and granted a card or denied. CNET outlines steps to take to figure out why you're denied for a credit card in the worst case scenario.
How to build credit with your card
Your credit score reflects how good or bad you are at managing debt. It shows lenders your creditworthiness, or how much risk is involved when lending you money. Your credit score is determined by a few factors, including your payment history, amount of debt owed, the length of credit history, how much new credit you've taken on, and your credit utilization ratio, which we'll explain below.
Here are some common blunders to avoid to keep your credit score healthy:
Not paying your minimum payment on time. In addition to being penalized with late fees and interest charges, late payments reported to credit bureaus indicate to future lenders that you are an unreliable borrower. Over time, consistently paying on time will build a strong credit history that will boost your score, making you eligible for better credit cards and interest rates.
Using too much of your credit limit. Using more than 30% of your total credit line can affect your credit score negatively. This percentage is called your credit utilization ratio. So if your credit limit is $1,000, you would want to keep all your credit card purchases under $300 as a best practice. Using more of your credit lines indicates to lenders that you are a risky borrower.
Closing credit card accounts. While it may seem reasonable to close an account for a card you don't use, it can actually lower your total available credit, lowering your credit utilization ratio and shorten your length of credit history. Depending on your situation, it may be better to keep the card open and use it occasionally. But, there are ways to cancel a credit card without destroying your credit.
Best picks for your first credit card
Intro OfferIntro Offer: Unlimited Cashback Match - only from Discover. Discover will automatically match all the cash back you've earned at the end of your first year! So you could turn $50 cash back into $100. Or turn $100 into $200. There's no minimum spending or maximum rewards. Just a dollar-for-dollar match.
APR14.49% - 23.49% Variable
Intro Purchase APR0% for 6 months
Recommended Credit Fair/New to Credit
Reward Rates
Earn 5% cash back on everyday purchases at different places each quarter like Amazon.com, grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations and when you pay using PayPal, up to the quarterly maximum when you activate.
Earn 1% unlimited cash back on all other purchases – automatically.
Annual Fee$0
Intro Balance Transfer APR10.99% for 6 months
Balance Transfer APR14.49% - 23.49% Variable
Balance Transfer Fee 3% intro balance transfer fee, up to 5% fee on future balance transfers (see terms)*
Late Payment Fee None the first time you pay late. After that, up to $41.
Foreign Transaction Fees None
Earn 5% cash back on everyday purchases at different places each quarter like Amazon.com, grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations and when you pay using PayPal, up to the quarterly maximum when you activate.
Earn 1% unlimited cash back on all other purchases – automatically.
Our Take
The Discover it® Student Cash Back* card offers the best rewards spread of student credit cards. You'll earn the 1% flat rate on all purchases, but you can also earn 5% cash back with the bonus quarterly rotating category, on up to $1,500 in combined spending per quarter (then 1%). From now through September, the bonus category includes restaurants and PayPal purchases. For October through December, it includes Amazon.com purchases and purchases made through digital wallet apps. You do have to manually activate these bonus categories through your account to earn this higher rate, though.
We also like that this card offers an Unlimited Cashback Match welcome bonus -- Discover will match your cash back earned for your whole first year, essentially doubling your cash back at the end of your first year.
For more details, see our full review of the Discover it Student Cash Back.
Intro OfferN/A
APR15.24% - 29.24% (Variable)
Intro Purchase APRN/A
Recommended Credit Limited/Fair/Good/Excellent
Reward Rates
Up to 1.5% cash back on eligible purchases after making 12 on-time monthly payments.
1% cash back on eligible purchases right away.
Annual Fee$0
Foreign Transaction Fees $0
Up to 1.5% cash back on eligible purchases after making 12 on-time monthly payments.
1% cash back on eligible purchases right away.
Our Take
The Petal 2 Visa Credit Card, issued by WebBank, is designed for applicants of various credit types -- whether it's fair, excellent or you're just getting started. It offers a credit line between $300 and $10,000 and 1% back on all eligible purchases.
To incentivize good credit-building behavior, your cash-back rate can increase to up to 1.5% on eligible purchases after 12 on-time monthly payments. There are no annual fees, security deposits, late fees or foreign transaction fees, making this a flexible option for anyone's first credit card.
Intro OfferN/A
APR26.99% (Variable)
Intro Purchase APRN/A
Recommended Credit Average, Fair, Limited
Reward RatesN/A
Annual Fee$0
Intro Balance Transfer APRN/A
Balance Transfer APR26.99% (Variable)
Balance Transfer Fee $0 at this Transfer APR
Late Payment Fee Up to $40
Foreign Transaction Fees None
Penalty APR None
Our Take
The Capital One Platinum Credit Card doesn't offer many perks, but it could be a good backup option for your first credit card if you don't want to put down a security deposit and aren't a student. This card is designed for people with fair, average or limited credit -- typically a credit score between 580 and 669. Though you won't earn rewards or a welcome bonus, you can build up your credit score with responsible use and there are no foreign transaction fees -- meaning you can use it abroad without facing additional costs.
For more details, check out our full review of the Capital One Platinum Credit Card.
Intro OfferIntro Offer: Unlimited Cashback Match - only from Discover. Discover will automatically match all the cash back you've earned at the end of your first year! There's no minimum spending or maximum rewards. Just a dollar-for-dollar match.
APR24.49% Variable
Intro Purchase APRN/A
Recommended Credit New/Rebuilding Credit
Reward Rates
Earn 2% cash back at Gas Stations and Restaurants on up to $1,000 in combined purchases each quarter.
Earn unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases – automatically.
Annual Fee$0
Intro Balance Transfer APR10.99% for 6 months
Balance Transfer APR24.49% Variable
Balance Transfer Fee 3% intro balance transfer fee, up to 5% fee on future balance transfers (see terms)*
Late Payment Fee None the first time you pay late. After that, up to $41.
Foreign Transaction Fees None
Earn 2% cash back at Gas Stations and Restaurants on up to $1,000 in combined purchases each quarter.
Earn unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases – automatically.
Our Take
All secured credit cards require a security deposit -- but not all of them enable you to earn rewards on your purchases. With a credit limit range of $200 to $2,500, you can earn 2% cash back at gas stations and restaurants with the Discover it® Secured Credit Card*, on up to a combined $1,000 in spending per calendar quarter (then 1%). You'll earn 1% cash back on other purchases, and you'll still get the Unlimited Cashback Match as with the other Discover credit cards. This card will also let you see if you're preapproved before you apply if you so choose.
For more information, see our full review of the Discover it Secured Credit Card.
Intro OfferLimited Time Offer: Earn $100 when you spend $100 in the first three months
APR16.49% - 26.49% (Variable)
Intro Purchase APRN/A
Recommended Credit Average, Fair, Limited
Reward Rates
Earn 8% cash back on entertainment purchases when you book through the Capital One Entertainment portal
Earn unlimited 5% cash back on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you'll get Capital One's best prices on thousands of trip options. Terms apply
Earn unlimited 3% cash back on dining, entertainment, popular streaming services and at grocery stores (excluding superstores like Walmart® and Target®)
Earn 1% on all other purchases.
Annual Fee$0
Intro Balance Transfer APRN/A
Balance Transfer APR16.49% - 26.49% (Variable)
Balance Transfer Fee $0 at this Transfer APR
Late Payment Fee Up to $40
Foreign Transaction Fees None
Penalty APR None
Earn 8% cash back on entertainment purchases when you book through the Capital One Entertainment portal
Earn unlimited 5% cash back on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you'll get Capital One's best prices on thousands of trip options. Terms apply
Earn unlimited 3% cash back on dining, entertainment, popular streaming services and at grocery stores (excluding superstores like Walmart® and Target®)
Earn 1% on all other purchases.
Our Take
If you eat a lot of takeout or go to restaurants often, the Capital One SavorOne Student Cash Rewards Credit Card can maximize cash back on your meals and entertainment. You may be able to get preapproved for this credit card to test the waters, though as a student credit card, it has more relaxed credit requirements than its traditional counterparts.
You'll earn 3% cash back on dining, entertainment, popular streaming services and at grocery stores (excluding superstores like Target and Walmart). Entertainment covers movie theaters, sports promoters (professional and semiprofessional live events), amusement parks, tourist attractions, aquariums, zoos, dance halls, record stores, pool halls and bowling alleys. Streaming services include Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. For other purchases, you'll earn a standard 1% cash back.
*All information about the Discover it Student Cash Back and the Discover it Secured Credit Card has been collected independently by CNET and has not been reviewed by the issuer.
The editorial content on this page is based solely on objective, independent assessments by our writers and is not influenced by advertising or partnerships. It has not been provided or commissioned by any third party. However, we may receive compensation when you click on links to products or services offered by our partners.
Russia 20 billion a day how long has russia been around facts about russia today what did russia do today why is russia taking so long russia spending on war how much money has russia spent on the war why has russia invaded ukraine how russians sneeze how russia will collapse
How Russia has spent a decade crumbling online freedoms
How Russia has spent a decade crumbling online freedoms
Aleksandr Litreev was on a way to a business meeting last February when his life changed forever. En route to a hotel in Yakaterinburg, a day's drive east of Moscow, Litreev was pulled over by police. When they asked him to hand over his phone, the then-24-year-old knew it was no routine traffic stop.
"They took me to a police station," Litreev recalls, "and magically some drugs appear." Litreev said he was arrested by around 10 armed policemen, beaten into confessing to ecstasy possession, and then detained for a month. He managed to flee to Estonia after being released into house arrest.
Litreev is a member of Russia's liberal opposition. Rather than rousing people to the ballot box, he builds internet tools that help everyday Russians fight against an increasingly controlling state. As part of the tightest squeeze on freedoms in Russia this century, critical online media publications have been labeled foreign agents, and platforms like Twitter and Facebook are being pressured to purge their platforms of content the Kremlin disapproves of.
With Russia's parliamentary elections running on Sept. 17 through Sept. 19, the Kremlin has stepped up censorship. It's demanded keywords associated with the opposition be blocked from Google and Yandex, the domestic search giant, and that Google and Apple kick an opposition-made app from their app stores.
Litreev has been fighting back for years, creating an app that sends lawyers to defend arrested protesters and joining the "digital resistance" that countered the government's attempt to block encrypted-messenger Telegram.
"If I go back to Russia now, I will get something like lifetime imprisonment," Litreev said. "Not gonna happen."
Before fleeing to Estonia, Litreev also worked with Alexei Navalny, who, for the last 10 years, has been the face of Russia's opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Navalny was poisoned by Russian spies in August 2020 and has since been jailed. Navalny's case shows how the Kremlin has lost any of the patience it once had: He was tolerated for nearly a decade -- as a popular blogger, investigative journalist and later an opposition politician -- before authorities attempted to eliminate him altogether.
"The things that are happening now have never happened before," said Litreev, explaining that authorities poisoning an opposition candidate would have been inconceivable as recently as 2017. "And now we're here."
Aleksandr Litreev, a software developer who fled to to Estona amid Russia's opposition crackdown.
Aleksandr Litreev
Digital wargames
In 2017, Litreev made his first significant venture into opposition politics. A YouTube expose from Navalny alleged that then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had embezzled over $1.2 billion, sparking protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg that turned into a general rebuke of widespread corruption and political repression.
Litreev's contribution was an app called Red Button. If protesters thought they were at risk of arrest, they could open the app and press the big red button it presented. That would automatically call a lawyer, who also receives the protester's emergency contact details and a GPS signal of their location.
"It's basically Uber, but for a lawyer," Litreev said. It was used extensively by demonstrators at the time, which got the attention of Kremlin authorities. "That's the point where pressure on me started," he added.
Litreev, then 21 and fresh out of university, was motivated to join the opposition movement as he watched the Kremlin ratchet up internet restrictions. A 2014 law allowed the telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor, to block access to online media that called for "unsanctioned mass public events." In 2016, Putin signed a bill requiring telecommunications companies to store their customers' text messages and phone calls for up to six months.
The law was used as a pretext to ban Telegram, a platform created by eccentric Russian-born developer Pavel Durov that doubles as an instant messenger and a social media platform. (Durov is now based in Dubai.) It allows for encrypted messages between people, like WhatsApp, but also for public figures and groups to create "channels" that can have millions of followers. Russian authorities wanted control over Telegram, and stopping them became Litreev's next project.
Thousands rallied for "internet freedom" in 2018 after Roskomnadzor banned Telegram. Many protested by bringing paper planes, Telegram's symbol.
Mikhail Tereshchenko/Getty
In 2018, the Kremlin ordered Durov to hand over keys that would allow the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB, to unscramble the app's encrypted messages. Roskomnadzor's stated goal was to fight terrorist attacks, like a 2017 train bombing in St. Petersburg, which it claimed were spreading thanks to Telegram and apps like it. Durov refused, calling the request both unconstitutional and technically untenable. What followed was a game of hide-and-seek that lasted for two years.
Roskomnadzor banned Telegram in April 2018, pulling down the app's servers. Scores of Russian internet users -- dubbed the Digital Resistance -- countered by hosting Telegram on proxy servers, which Roskomnadzor found and banned too. For his part, Litreev helped create software that deployed millions of proxy servers at once, making it impossible for Russian authorities to manually pull them down individually.
"They got tired of banning IP address by IP address, so they started to ban whole subnetworks, ranges of IP addresses," he said. "At some point, when we got our service hosted on Amazon and on Google Cloud, they accidentally banned a huge subnet which belongs to Google."
Those attempts to ban Telegram were unsuccessful. Not only did the service remain accessible, its Russian user base actually grew. Meanwhile, with authorities hastily banning up to 19 million IP addresses, Google and Amazon services were briefly unusable throughout Russia.
Roskomnadzor had a choice: either block a huge range of IP addresses and risk more catastrophic blackouts, or rescind the ban on Telegram. "It was a fight for all or nothing," Litreev said.
After two years, Roskomnadzor relented, lifting its Telegram ban last June on the grounds that the company would help it with terrorism inquiries in the future. The Digital Resistance won this battle, the latest in a war that had been going on since 2012.
Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin in 2012.
Natalia Kolesnikova/Getty
The first ruling
Russia is often grouped with China as a troublesome autocracy. A common misconception related to this comparison is that Russia has always had a fiercely censored internet. But unlike China's internet, which was built from the ground up not to rely on Western companies or users, Russia's internet largely grew freely from the mid-'90s.
That began to change in 2012, when Putin became president for the second time.
Much like the US, Russian presidents were bound by the constitution to serve no more than two consecutive four-year terms. So in 2008, when Putin swapped places with Dmitry Medvedev, becoming prime minister while Medvedev assumed the presidency, many suspected it was a ploy to circumvent constitutional limits. Those suspicions were confirmed when he announced his intention to run as president again in 2011.
When Putin's United Russia party retained a majority in the parliamentary elections two months later -- elections local monitors and the EU said were fraudulent -- protests erupted. Tens of thousands demanded free elections and the release of political prisoners. But what concerned the Kremlin wasn't the demonstrators, but how they managed to organize themselves. These protests were the biggest the country had seen since the '90s, and they were powered by social media.
"The driving force back then was the internet -- social media, Facebook and Twitter," said Andrei Soldatov, a journalist and co-author of The Red Web, a book that details Russia's tightening grip on internet freedoms. "That was the moment the Kremlin started paying attention to this new threat, and it was absolutely clear that it was the big thing for years to come."
The "Snow Revolution" protests in Moscow, 2011.
Epsilon/Getty
Online freedoms began unraveling a month after Putin took office in 2012. The Russian Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly) started drafting an internet restriction bill that lawmakers claimed was necessary to protect minors from child sexual abuse material, online drug markets and content that encouraged self harm. In practice, it allowed government authorities to create an internet blacklist.
Roskomnadzor now had legal cover to pull down websites it didn't like. Today, the internet in Russia is still markedly more open than it is in countries like China, Egypt and Vietnam. But Russia's strategy of censorship is more subtle, focused less on suppressing speech than on oppressing competition.
"The idea is not to prevent you from getting information," Soldatov said. "The idea is to discourage you from participating in political activities of any kind, online or offline."
The Kremlin's aversion to political opposition explains why political protests are often followed by a tightening of controls. The Moscow demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 led to the first internet restriction bill, and Telegram was targeted in 2018 after protests were organized on the platform.
Then, in 2019, the opposition began translating online engagement into electoral victories.
A new era
Activists, journalists and opposition politicians had proven adept at maneuvering around the digital barriers the Kremlin had been throwing up since 2012. Navalny continued to use his prominent online platform to trouble authorities. Though demonized on state TV, many of his YouTube documentaries on shadowy Kremlin activities racked up hundreds of millions of views. Older Russians who regularly watched Russian television thought Navalny was a menace. Many middle-class, internet-savvy Russians, however, were receptive to his cause.
Though the Kremlin punished Navalny in various ways, convicting him on trumped-up fraud charges and barring him from running for office, authorities showed some restraint in suppressing his movement.
"Navalny was tolerated for a decade," said William Partlett, a professor at Melbourne Law School who researches post-Soviet societies and is authoring a book on Navalny. "He was exposing high-level corruption among very important, powerful people in the inner circle of the Kremlin. And he was allowed to do that, and I think the idea was, 'we can manage this guy.'"
That changed in 2019. Navalny, unable to run for Moscow city council himself, encouraged his followers to adopt the "smart voting" doctrine. It meant voting for anyone other than the ruling United Russia party, be they liberals, avowed communists or hardcore nationalists. The plan worked: The "systemic opposition" won 20 of Moscow's 45 seats, reducing the United Russia Party's majority from 38 to 25.
The same system was used successfully in regional elections, ousting three United Russia governors. In a world where freedom of expression is fine up until the point where it infringes on Kremlin control, this was all unacceptable. Navalny's opposition movement was powered by online platforms, from Telegram to Twitter, and now it was producing tangible offline results.
"Now the question for Putin becomes, is the internet manageable?" Partlett said.
The Kremlin cracked down hard. An online libel law was enacted last December, allowing sites to be blocked and people to be jailed for "defaming" public figures. Specific activists and journalists have been targeted: one journalist was jailed for 25 days for retweeting a photo that carried the date and time of a planned protest, while a video of police violently interrogating blogger Gennady Shulga was leaked by the police themselves, Shulga said, "to show people what the authorities can do."
Navalny's treatment played out in front of the world. He was poisoned in an airport in August 2020, then flown to Berlin, where he recuperated. After returning to Russia, he was immediately imprisoned. Meanwhile, Putin amended the constitution in April to allow him to rule as president until 2036.
Alexei Navalny, the face of Russia's liberal opposition, is currently jailed in Russia.
Dmitry Serebryakov/Getty
Taking on big tech
Litreev talks about his exploits like a nimble David outmaneuvering a lumbering, sluggish Goliath. He knows the battle will be perilous but expects he and his fellow activists will ultimately prevail.
"The level of expertise and level of professionalism on the government side is much lower than our side," he said.
Litreev points to a spat between Twitter and Kremlin as evidence. In March, Roskomnadzor demanded Twitter take down thousands of tweets dating back to 2017 that encouraged illegal activity -- which includes child porn, drug markets and, of course, news stories related to opposition candidates. To motivate Twitter to fulfill the request, the telecoms regulator throttled Twitter's speed for months.
But, in a flashback to the Roskomnadzor inadvertently blocking Google amid a clumsy attempt to ban Telegram, sites like Reddit.com and Microsoft.com went down too. People realized that authorities had targeted the "t.co" link-shortening formation Twitter uses, which clobbered any website that ended with the letter "t."
It was a conspicuous fumble on the part of Roskomnadzor, but authorities did manage to isolate and slow down Twitter. The initial missteps masked the use of a concerning new suite of powers that had been signed into law in 2019, called "the sovereign internet," or RuNet.
The law requires ISPs to connect a new range of state hardware to internet exchange points. These "big red boxes" all direct to a control center in Moscow and allow the Kremlin to manage the flow of traffic from one region of the country to another. The system has been called a "digital Iron Curtain," akin to China's Great Firewall that separates its internet from the rest of the world.
Soldatov says this comparison is inaccurate. The Kremlin isn't interested in isolating itself from the rest of the internet, he says, since that would prove economically ruinous. Rather, it's a tool to control the flow of information from one region of the country to the next.
"The sovereign internet was never about the West. It's about what's going on inside the country," he said. "The most sensitive content is generated inside the country."
Moscovites protesting the jailing of Navalny in April.
Anadolu Agency/Getty
Roskomnadzor was able to pair the new sovereign internet hardware with existing data surveillance technology to selectively slow Twitter traffic. In the future, the Kremlin could use the same technology to, for example, throttle certain apps to prevent livestreams from a protest in Moscow from reaching other parts of the country.
It was the government's first known experiment with its newest online tools -- and it worked.
Twitter has removed over 6,000 tweets, according to Roskomnadzor. In the months since, Russian authorities have demanded Facebook take down content, fined Google $81,000 for not taking down content, and told Facebook and Twitter to store all data of Russian users within the country. On Aug. 26, Twitter and Facebook were both fined for not storing such data quickly enough.
Facebook, Google and Twitter declined to comment. Roskomnadzor was contacted but didn't respond.
Just as the Kremlin pressures Facebook, Google and Twitter, it fosters local substitutes like RuTube, a YouTube alternative owned by the state gas company. Law requires Android phones to come preloaded with 16 Russian-made apps, including the VK social media app and the Yandex search engine, while Apple is required to prompt Russians to download the apps during the setup process of new iPhones. It's part of a plan meant to better allow authorities to control online platforms so that anti-Kremlin content can't go viral.
"The tools the Russian government uses are evolving with time. They are much more advanced if we compare them to, say, 2018," Litreev acknowledged. "But modern problems require modern solutions."
The modern problems
Litreev's latest project is Solar Labs, a decentralized VPN that's based on blockchain and incentivized with cryptocurrency. The Solar Labs platform will allow people around the world to host their own VPN servers, for which they'll be paid with Solar Labs cryptocurrency tokens. If enough people from a variety of countries host their own VPN servers, it'll be impossible for all servers to be taken down at once.
"Even if the government will do whatever it takes to block our service, they will not succeed unless they just shut the whole internet for the whole country," he said. Solar Labs is designed to be useful not just for Russians, but also Iranians, Chinese and Belarussians, all of whom face strict internet censorship.
Litreev says the Kremlin's crackdowns on activists, journalists and dissidents are acts of hysteria. The more extreme the measure, the more desperation it reflects.
And the measures have gotten extreme. It's not just in Russia, either. In May, Belarus' ruler, who's closely aligned with Putin, used military force to ground a RyanAir plane midflight to detain a dissident journalist. The whole region's rules are being rewritten.
Litreev wants to go home to see old faces and places, but says people like him need to work to create a safe Russia. He hopes that Solar Labs' VPN, which launches in September, will be part of that process. Meanwhile, Litreev feels safe in Estonia -- though he makes sure any flights he takes avoid both Russian and Belarusian airspace.
Soldatov, living in London, is less hopeful. He said he was optimistic five years ago, when he co-authored The Red Web, but that the events since then have sapped his confidence.
"We use this word, 'unprecedented,'" he said. "The problem when something is unprecedented is you cannot calculate your risks, because you do not know where they are going to stop."
Road trip essentials for adults best summer road trip road trip essentials for teens road trip essentials for adults essentials for long road trips summer road trip ideas fun road trip essentials 10 roads trucking 10 roads trucking greensboro nc 10 roads logistics llc
10 Road Trip Essentials for Summer Travel
10 Road Trip Essentials for Summer Travel
Road trips are awesome: Endless highways let you go anywhere and just about everywhere. From the oceans to the mountains, and every variation of flat farmland, rocky valley and scenic vista along the way, it can be all kinds of grand adventure.
Whether you're planning on a few days, a few weeks or multiple months, the right road trip gear can make or break a trip. What follows isn't a list of gadgets, though there are a few. Instead, it's a mix of easy-to-find items, some essential apps and services and a handful of tips that will make your trip go a lot smoother. It's also mostly focused on the "road" part of "road trip," though some of these summer road trip essentials will work just fine if you're jetsetting. I hope you've got your camping and hiking gear sorted already, if that's your thing.
And who am I to offer advice? A lover of road trips. Last year I did a 10-week, 10,000-mile road trip around the US. This year, a 9,900-mile adventure that hit nine national parks. Before that, I took multiple trips across and around the US, Europe, Australia and more. Yeah. I love road trips.
Understandably, there will be variations on what you need depending how long you're going, where you're going, your mode of travel and how many people are with you. I don't expect everyone to drive for 10 weeks in a Miata, though if you have the chance, I'd highly recommend it.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
Download maps for use offline
I think it's fair to say most of us take for granted that we'll have mobile data wherever we go. Depending where your road trip takes you, you might not. If you stick to the interstates, you're probably fine. But if you want to take some incredible two-lane backroads, perhaps not.
It's easy to download Google Maps so you can still figure out where you're going, even if you don't have data. Simply search for where you're going such as "Wrangell-St, Elias National Park." Swipe up twice so the location info fills the screen. Tap the triple vertical dots in the upper right and select download offline map. Then select the area you'll be covering on your drive.
GPS location info doesn't require a data connection, only a reasonably clear view of the sky. As long as the maps are already loaded, you can navigate on roads and even from many trails.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Consider an unlimited data upgrade
If you're usually within Wi-Fi range, you probably don't realize how quickly certain activities can eat up your data. Music, for instance, is only a fraction of the data required for video, but listening nonstop for six hours each day during a drive can quickly nuke your plan's included data.
If your provider has an unlimited option, it's worth considering. Some, like Google Fi, let you swap to an unlimited plan any month you want. I also like Google Fi because it has no international roaming in case your road trip is really epic. Check your current provider if you don't already have unlimited data.
Alternately, consider downloading music/podcasts/audiobooks when you're on Wi-Fi and then turn off your data connection in the car (though make sure you download the maps first!).
We've rounded up the best unlimited data plan options for the three major US carriers.
Check out Best Unlimited Data Plans for 2022 for more..
Scosche/CNET
Cars have come with USB plugs for years now, but you've probably noticed they don't recharge your phone very quickly. Some do, in which case you can probably ignore this gadget. If yours doesn't, or if you have more devices than charge ports, consider a separate USB plug for your "cigarette lighter" outlet. The better ones, like the Anker PowerDrive Speed Plus and Scosche CPDCA38 can output enough power to rapidly charge your devices. I've had an older, slower version of the latter and it's worked great for years.
If your car has Android or Apple Auto, these typically require a physical connection between the car and the phone, which precludes the use of a cigarette adapter.
Amazon
This isn't strictly a "road" essential, but I recommend one for any kind of travel. A reasonably-sized USB battery, say 10,000 mAh or so, that can fast charge your phone or other devices can be handy in many situations and a lifesaver in others.
There are infinite sizes, shapes and colors. I don't recommend the smallest ones because they're more for emergencies and usually only give you a partial charge. I also don't recommend really massive ones as they're just heavy to lug around. A 10,000-mAh battery can charge your phone from empty multiple times. There's no "perfect" size, but it's worth starting there to figure out what you need.
I've traveled with various batteries for years. My current pick is the Anker PowerCore 10000 PD Redux because it's small, but has high capacity and charges my phone rapidly via USB-C.
Windex/CNET
These were the MVP of my road trip last year: They're wet wipes, but for windows. Why are they on a list of essentials? Because there's only so much windshield wipers can do: Some bugs and grime are just too much for them to handle. These work great on even the most gruesome bug guts.
The package is resealable too, so you can keep them tucked beside your seat for when they're needed.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
The majority of Americans live within a road trip's distance of at least one national park, often several. No matter where your road trip is headed, check if it passes near one. They're all good and worth a visit.
Some are free, but most have an entry fee around $30 or so. Or you can get the annual National Park pass, also called the America the Beautiful or Interagency pass. This gets you in over 2,000 federal lands. Three visits to any park should let it pay for itself.
You can get them at the park's entrance or on the USGS and REI websites.
If you are considering visiting a national park this year, check out top tips for visiting them.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst? If you have room for it, some kind of roadside emergency kit is probably a good idea. I say "probably" since the better option for most people is a AAA membership, so your phone and a USB battery pack will keep you covered. I mean, does your car even have a spare tire? Mine doesn't. It comes with wishful thinking and a phone number.
But it's possible your adventure will take you away from cell coverage, and that's a bad place to get a flat or have a breakdown. The Lifeline kit linked here is decent, for what it is. To be honest, though, I'm not sure how useful these really are. None of the items in this kit are a bad idea, per se, but will you use them even if you do break down? You can get a first aid kit separately (and you should). Same for a tire inflator. But is there anyone out there that knows enough about car repair to need a crappy screwdriver and wrench set? If so, wouldn't they already have quality tools? Do you know how to safely connect jumper cables so you don't accidentally blow up a car battery? If you said "positive to positive, negative to negative," don't buy jumper cables. Call for help.
So yeah, I feel like a USB battery pack and a AAA membership are far more useful for most people for most road trips. But hey, if you know you're going to be driving into the unknown, it's worth considering… but if you're that advanced I'd assume you already have the right gear.
If you want some other options, check out our best emergency kits for cars.
AAA
There's one annual bill that's permanently on my "always renew" list: my AAA membership. I've only had to use it a handful of times, but it's a peace of mind that's easily worth its cost. And it's not even that expensive. Get towed once and you've paid for your membership for several years.
And it's not just towing. They'll help you change a flat, give your car a jump and more. This is a no-brainer.
There are a ton of choices for cameras, and for most people I'd actually say your phone is fine. An expensive camera isn't going to take better pictures if you don't know how to use it. Also, you can take great photos with your phone.
If you have an older phone or want something more for rugged travel, a GoPro can take great photos and videos and doesn't cost a ton. The Hero 9 and 10 are very similar, though the 10 is a little easier to use as it has a faster processor. I used the 9 on my trip last year, and the 10 on my trip this year, and the 10 annoyed me way less and didn't lock up as much.
I actually did a whole article about this topic: Best Camera Gear for Your Next Road Trip.
Geoff Morrison/CNET
This is a bit tricky as your car and needs are probably different from mine. If you do get a GoPro, having somewhere to mount it in the car can get you some epic shots. There are a bunch of options. A suction cup mount is a good place to start. I like this one as it's inexpensive, but can pivot and swivel in just about any direction.
I also have an antenna mount I like a lot. You can see it with a long selfie stick attached with a 360 camera on top in the image above. It's from CravenSpeed and for the Miata, but they might have a version that fits your car.
As well as covering TV and other display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations around the world, including nuclear submarines, massive aircraft carriers, medieval castles, epic 10,000 mile road trips, and more. Check out Tech Treks for all his tours and adventures.
He wrote a bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines, along with a sequel. You can follow his adventures on Instagram and his YouTube channel.
