College alert systems unreliable, study says

A study by a Georgia Tech scientist has found that alert systems adopted by many colleges and universities in the wake of last year’s Virginia Tech shootings can be unreliable, slow in a crisis and could interfere with 911 communications.

The emergency notification systems send automated text messages and voice calls to cell phones — a system that is unable to meet the federal emergency alert goal to reach 85 percent of the population within 10 minutes, said Patrick Traynor of Georgia Tech’s Information Security Center.

Text messages are vulnerable to fraud, since hackers could send out false alerts and like e-mails, texts could be delayed. And in emergencies, a flood of calls to loved ones could overload a cell network and interrupt emergency 911 communications, Traynor said.