'Adding insult to injury': another Dfat bungle reveals identities of Australians stranded overseas

The foreign affairs department has again revealed the identities of Australians stranded overseas by adding their email addresses into the wrong field – the third data breach in as many months.

The latest incident occurred on Wednesday when the Australian embassy in Paris sent an email to Australians stuck in France who had registered their wish to return home with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat). More than 32,000 Australians have registered globally.

Related: Dfat admits email addresses of almost 3,000 Australians stranded overseas released in breach

In the embassy’s email, seen by Guardian Australia, the contact details of at least 15 Australian citizens appear in the Cc section, above an email announcing the embassy was accepting expressions of interest for repatriation flights into Perth.

“Dear Australian Citizen or Permanent Resident, Thank you for registering with us on the Citizen Information Portal … We are currently reaching out to the people who are registered with us and who may be interested in flight capacity into Perth, Western Australia in the coming few weeks,” the email stated.

After Guardian Australia contacted Dfat, the department attempted to recall the email and asked recipients who still had access to delete it.

“We are undertaking an assessment of this incident and are reviewing our internal processes to ensure such mistakes do not happen again,” Dfat’s follow-up email to recipients said.

One recipient, who asked to remain anonymous, told Guardian Australia the privacy breach added “insult to injury” of being stuck in France.

“Whoever wrote the email couldn’t even be bothered to use the Bcc function in Gmail. My expectations are so low, it is hard to be surprised,” she said.

Dfat was previously forced to apologise for inadvertently revealing the email addresses of 2,727 stranded Australians by listing them in the To field rather than the Bcc field in a late September email about interest-free loans for vulnerable Australians overseas. The department unsuccessfully attempted to recall the email.

Australia’s embassy in Bogota, Colombia, in late July forwarded the details of a stranded Australian’s circumstances and visa details as well as their name, profession and contact details to at least 300 Australians stuck in South America, by clicking “reply all” instead of “reply”.

Related: Australians 'abandoned not stranded' by cap on flight arrivals, families say

It is unclear if the Perth flights mentioned in Wednesday’s email are related to Scott Morrison’s announcement last week of emergency evacuation flights to repatriate Australians from the UK, India and South Africa.

When announcing the flights, the prime minister said the government would be expanding the Howard Springs quarantine facility in the Northern Territory, a move that will allow for 5,000 additional quarantine places by the end of March, or about 200 per week.

Airlines are struggling to maintain flights to Australia under the current weekly arrival cap of about 5,700 – where Sydney accepts 2,950, Perth 1,050, Brisbane 1,000 and Adelaide about 500.

The Board of Airline Representatives of Australia (Bara) – which represents airlines including Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and Etihad – scolded the government on Wednesday for only telling airlines how many passengers they can carry on each flight just four days before new allocations take effect on Sunday.

Some flights into Sydney for the next four weeks have been limited to 28 passengers, with airlines previously acknowledging they were prioritising more expensive tickets and repeatedly cancelling economy tickets, to remain viable under the caps.

Guardian Australia understands the notice period of the capacity allowances has caused airlines to cancel some tickets into Australia, leaving more citizens stranded overseas.

“It has already led to yet more uncertainty and stress for Australians stranded overseas because international airlines cannot tell many of them when they will be able to travel home,” Bara said.

Related: Why are more than 25,000 Australians still stranded overseas, six months into the pandemic?

The board has warned of a potential exodus of the remaining airlines flying into Australia unless the government better manages the caps.

Bara’s executive director, Barry Abrams, told Guardian Australia the government’s Howard Springs quarantine plan “doesn’t offer anything to help the airlines to remain commercially viable”. He said the current cap on 5,700 arrivals was forcing “a number of airlines” to review their operations into Australia on a four-week rolling period.

Etihad and Air Canada were the latest airlines to pull out of Australian routes.

The federal infrastructure department, which administers the arrival caps, defended the amount of notice given to airlines, with a spokesman saying one of the 36 airlines that applied to fly into Australia submitted its planned routes only “late in the evening on Friday 16 October”.

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s president, Rosalind Croucher, told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday the arrival caps could breach article 10 of the UN convention on the rights of the child as it prevents timely family reunifications.