Messages sent during work hours may now be available to your boss. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that employers who read their workers' digital communications if they were sent during work hours were right to do so, according to the BBC.
The decision was made in the case of a Romanian worker who accused his boss of violating his personal privacy when they intercepted his messages.
The worker in question, Bogdan Barbulescu, had set up a Yahoo Messenger account for work but also had a private messaging account. During his time with an unnamed company he was informed in writing that it had accessed his accounts and found he had sent personal messages during work hours. Barbulescu wrote back claiming he had only used the account for professional purposes, according to case details released by the court.
However, his employer had transcripts of the messages, according to The Guardian. And the company had a policy that workers were not to use it for personal communication. Barbulescu was fired shortly after the incident, in August 2007.
Therefore, judges in the case stated that the employee had breached the rules of the company. They said it would not be "unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours." They added, "The employer acted within its disciplinary powers since, as the domestic courts found, it had accessed the Yahoo Messenger account on the assumption that the information in question had been related to professional activities and that such access had therefore been legitimate. The court sees no reason to question these findings."
"The ruling will be in effect for all European countries that back the European Convention on Human Rights," Agence France-Presse reports.
Employees have now been warned they should avoid using any devices given to them by employers for personal communication, the Daily Mail reports.
