Australia’s immigration department implemented a new email policy just weeks ago after learning the Guardian was aware of an embarrassing blunder that exposed the personal details of world leaders.

On Monday the Guardian reported an employee of the department had inadvertently disclosed the passport numbers, visa details and other personal identifiers of the world leaders attending the G20 summit in Brisbane after an email was mistakenly sent to an organiser of the Asian Cup football tournament because of an autocomplete function.

World leaders including US president Barack Obama, Russian president Vladimir Putin, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and German chancellor Angela Merkel were among those affected by the breach.

The White House confirmed the US administration was examining reports of the disclosure of Obama’s details.

On Monday the chief information officer of Australia’s immigration department told The Australian it had disabled the autocomplete function on emails to prevent a similar breach occurring.

“If you have emailed a person before, you have to retype in their address completely,” he said. “I have made the addressing torturous, so that you actually ­really need to think about it. They [staff] are pretty unhappy about it.

“I think we are worried about the importance of the information that we hold, and whilst it is causing a productivity impact on all staff, it is reminding all staff of the criticality of information, because they know why they have done it.”

But the Guardian has learned this policy was implemented just weeks ago, after the department became aware of the Guardian’s freedom of information request for the G20 data breach documents.

The department said that its new policy was initiated “after the department reviewed its email protocols”.



A spokesman said: “The department has reviewed and strengthened its email protocols to limit and contain future breaches.

“The policy was implemented after the department reviewed its email protocols in relation to this incident. It was not implemented as a result of the FOI request to the OAIC [Office of the Australian Information Commissioner].”

The White House deputy press secretary, Eric Schultz, said on Monday the administration was “looking into [the reports] and we’ll take all appropriate steps necessary to ensure the privacy and security of the president’s personal information”.

A senior official in the Indian government told the Hindustan Times: “We have seen the report and will take necessary action at our end on the matter.”

The immigration department initially determined it was not necessary to inform the world leaders of the breach.

In emails obtained under Australia’s freedom of information laws an immigration department official wrote to Australia’s privacy commissioner after the breach and said: “Given that the risks of the breach are considered very low and the actions that have been taken to limit the further distribution of the email, I do not consider it necessary to notify the clients of the breach.”

The office of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has also confirmed to Der Spiegel it was not informed of the breach.

“The German government learned about what happened from the press,” a spokesman told Spiegel Online. “The government has none of its own information about this.”