What do more than 870,000 students across the nation have in common?

Since 2012, they have all completed the FBI’s Safe Online Surfing (SOS) Internet Challenge. Available through a free website at https://sos.fbi.gov, this initiative promotes cyber citizenship by teaching students in third through eighth grades how to recognize and respond to online dangers through a series of fun, interactive activities.

Anyone can visit the website and learn all about cyber safety, but teachers must sign up their school to enable their students to take the exam and participate in the national competition. Once enrolled, teachers are given access to a secure webpage to enroll their students (anonymously, by numeric test keys) and request their test scores. E-mail customer support is also provided. Top-scoring schools each month are recognized by their local FBI field office when possible. All public, private, and home schools with at least five students are welcome to participate.

Now entering its fifth season, the FBI-SOS program has seen increased participation each year. From September 2015 through May 2016, nearly a half-million students nationwide finished the activities and took the exam. We look forward to even more young people completing the program in the school year ahead. The challenge begins September 1.

The FBI’s Safe Online Surfing (SOS) Internet Challenge for students in third through eighth grades is available at https://sos.fbi.gov.

ChicagoTribune: The smartphone is the teen’s conduit to the digital world. But it’s a conduit that runs both directions. Smartphones give bad people unfiltered access to good kids. Sexual predators, pornographers, cyberbullies and scammers can reach out to children without fear of parent intervention, because teens rarely tell their parents who they are talking to or what they are doing online.

But parents are no longer helpless to defend against these digital dangers. Over one million parents have turned to TeenSafe to help them monitor their child’s cell phone activity – without their child even knowing it. Now you can know if your child has been contacted by a sexual predator or has been duped into sexting. Here are five ways that TeenSafe can help you protect your children from digital dangers.

1. Monitor their text messages – even deleted messages. TeenSafe allows you to read all sent, received and deleted SMS and iMessages without touching your teen’s phone. Just log into your TeenSafe account to access your child’s data.
2. Track their incoming and outgoing calls. Your TeenSafe subscription gives you access to your teen’s call logs, including contact name, number, date and duration of the call.
3. Monitor their social media. View your teen’s Instagram posts, read comments and see who’s following your teen with TeenSafe. You can also view their activity on Whatsapp, Kik and Tinder.
4. Review their browser history. TeenSafe makes it easy for you to see what sites your teen has visited, which ones they’ve bookmarked and who their contacts are.
5. Follow their phone. TeenSafe can help you monitor your teen in the real world as well as the digital world. You can see the cell phone’s current location on a map, as well as a history of the phone’s location.

USA Today is an advocate of TeenSafe, reporting that “TeenSafe has kept teens out of dangerous situations.” The Memphis affiliate of NBC calls TeenSafe “the ultimate app for preventing cyberbullying.” The TeenSafe app can be downloaded directly to your phone, and is free with your subscription.

Short of taking away your teen’s smartphone, TeenSafe is the best way for parents to protect their children from a growing number of digital dangers.