In two separate incidents this week, the UK Home Office inadvertently revealed private information on hundreds of UK and EU citizens. In a first incident, 500 email addresses of UK citizens from countries belonging to the Commonwealth were leaked.
The second incident involved the inadvertent exposure of 240 email addresses of EU citizens that had applied to obtain settlement status if/when the UK leaves the EU. The leak resulted from an ‘administrative error’ by an official who added the email addresses of 240 recipients to the “cc” field rather than the “bcc” field that would have kept the addresses hidden. The department has issued an apology to the affected people and urged them to delete the erroneous email. According to security experts, the incidents seem to violate the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Read more: EU Citizens’ Hit by UK Government Data Leak
