CLAY COUNTY – The Clay County Sheriff’s Office suspended its SaferWatch app Saturday, minutes after it learned a glitch with the system may have exposed personal information of people who signed up to receive alerts from the agency.

Sheriff Michelle Cook posted a video on social media within an hour after thousands were bombarded with continuous personal text messages through the app, some including email addresses and telephone numbers.

CCSO subscribes to SaferWatch, which allows citizens to report suspicious activities and receive safety alert messages.

“I just got off the phone with the company's owner, and he has assured me that it was not a hack, but a glitch in the system,” Cook said. “I'm (going to) be honest with you; I'm pretty upset about this. “Information was potentially exposed that we don't even see, but I understand that some of you were able to see such things as email addresses and general locations and phone numbers. That's absolutely unacceptable. I let the owner of the company know that we have shut it off for now. I don't think we'll be using SaferWatch until I get a complete report from the company.”

Cook said she’s done business with SaferWatch for six years while at Clay County and as the Atlantic Beach Chief of Police.

“Never has this happened before,” she said. “The company has always been very responsive and very good about keeping private information private, working with us to address any issues.

“I do want to apologize to everybody for what happened. That was annoying and bothersome and unacceptable. We're going to get to the bottom of this. I'm going to wait; give the owner a couple of days to do some research. I'll report back to you with what we find as we work with the company.”