Montreal's McGill University is reviewing its computer system after the private academic records of hundreds of students were made accessible on the school's website.

McGill graduate Kent Glowinski discovered the files from 2004 while using the website's search engine on Thursday. He said entering a student's name brought up information about their transcripts, including their marks. Normally, transcripts are private and are mailed to students who request them.

"The first feeling was, oh my God, I'm looking at something dirty. … I shouldn't be looking at this. This is not right. This is personal information," said Glowinski, who visited the school's website to look up some routine information.

Glowinski, who had typed his surname into the search engine, got his brother's transcripts: every course, mark and significant statistic about his time at McGill.

"I saw my personal transcript out there in cyberspace and it was utter horror, because my transcripts, it shows the highlights and the low points of my four-year academic career at McGill University and I was horrified," Devin Glowinski said.

McGill University said its records show that fewer than a dozen people looked at the data. School officials have apologized to Glowinski and said they were able to correct the problem within 90 minutes of hearing about it.

McGill was unaware of the problem until CBC News contacted the university on Friday. Officials later said the computer problem was a glitch caused by a switch to a new search engine on the site.

"As soon as we discovered the breach, we immediately addressed it," said deputy provost Morton Mendelson. "We removed the files, corrected the breach and we are moving forward. We'll take precautions to ensure that analogous problems do not occur again."

Barbara McIsaac, a leading privacy expert, said the problem on McGill's website is unfortunate, but not surprising.

"It seems the more we are using electronic means of transmitting, storing and using data, the more likely there is going to be some kind of mistakes, some kind of error," McIsaac said. "Something is going to happen that is going to allow personal information and other data to be made available to people who shouldn't have it."

McIsaac, who wrote The Law of Privacy in Canada, said large institutions have a duty "to look after that information and to put in place the appropriate safeguards."