Employers can read private online messages sent during work, rules Strasbourg
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Employers are entitled to read private messages sent over the internet by employees during work, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled.
Judges ruled a company had the right to read an employee’s messages sent via Yahoo Messenger during working hours.
The employee was an engineer in Romania who asked the court to find his employer had breached his right to confidential correspondence after it accessed his online messages in 2007 before firing him.
He had used the program to talk to his brother and fiancée in addition to professional contacts. But judges ruled it was not “unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours”.
The judges also added, however, that unregulated spying on employees was unacceptable and said employers should draw up policies on the issue.
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