Valencia College is alerting its students and prospective students after a file with names, addresses and birthdates became public and searchable on Google.

The file also contained the students' Valencia ID number, which is used by the college to track students. No social security numbers were released, the college said. 

The file was created because Valencia hired a company to create a custom page for prospective students to communicate with the college. The company Valencia hired sub-contracted part of the work with another company. Originally, the file was password-protected, but somehow, over time, it lost that password protection.

A student who searched for her own name found the file and alerted the college. The college said it contacted the company that accidentally allowed the information to lose its password protection, and the company had the file removed within hours.

None of the information released was technically private information. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, exempts from privacy laws directory information like "a student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance," according to the Department of Education website.

However, Valencia says it still regrets the information became published online for anyone to search for so easily. That's why the college informed the affected students of the situation and issued an apology by email.