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The Home Office has apologized to hundreds of EU citizens who have applied for the status of the UK after it accidentally shared their details.
The Home Office feels about 240 personal email addresses in an email, which could amount to a breach of the Data Protection Act. The department blamed the incident on an administrative error.
In a statement to the BBC Radio 4's Today program, the Home Office said it had been improving its systems and procedures. It could be done in apology in parliament.
Applicants had received an email from the department on Sunday asking them to resubmit their information. But the addresses of other applicants to whom the email had been sent were not hidden.
The Home Office then sent another email urging recipients to delete the previous one.
Natasha Jung, a recipient of the email, shared the Home Office's follow-up email on Twitter and wrote: "Sunday evening I had my data breached by the Home Office. When will the UK wake up and realize that EU citizens are being treated as second-clbad citizens? We have had zero say in the whole process, despite Brexit affecting us the most. "
On Monday, the immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, was apologized to the Windrush generation after about 500 private email addresses were mistakenly shared with recipients of a mailing list for the compensation scheme.
More than 400,000 European nationals have so far applied to secure their stay in the UK after Brexit, according to government figures.
The EU settlement scheme, which was set up to formally grant EU citizens the right to live in the UK after Brexit, has received about 200,000 additional applications since it went live at the end of the last month.
Critics have repeatedly said the system is slow and too bureaucratic.
A spokesperson said: "In communicating with a small group of applicants, an email address could be seen.
"As soon as we have been diagnosed, we apologize to the applicants and have made their way to the world."
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