8th Graders Win January National FBI Safe Online Surfing

FBI NEWS -- April 12, 2019 FBI Memphis Public Affairs Officer Elizabeth Clement Webb (615) 232-7500

The FBI Memphis Field Office recognized 8th grade students today at Richview Middle School for winning the National FBI Safe Online Surfing (FBI-SOS) award. The computer literacy class students scored a composite score of 93.19 percent to win the January 2019 award in the Starfish category. For the month of January 2019, a total of 116,985 students in 1,897 schools in all 50 states and U.S. territories participated in the FBI-SOS Internet Challenge.

Open to all public, private, and home schools nationwide, the FBI-SOS initiative is a free, age-appropriate, competitive, and fun online program that promotes cyber citizenship and teaches students in third through eighth grades how to recognize and respond to online dangers—like Internet predators and cyberbullying—and covers topics such as social networking and gaming safety. Every month during the school year, the FBI recognizes the top-scoring schools in each of its three size categories, based on the number of students participating from each school.

The FBI-SOS Internet Challenge was developed with the assistance of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and with the input of teachers and school administrators. Anyone—young or old, in the U.S. or worldwide—can complete the activities on the FBI-SOS website. The testing and competition, however, are only open to students in grades 3-8 at public, private, or home schools in the United States or its territories.