European court rules companies must tell employees of e-mail checks
Strasbourg — Companies must tell employees in advance if their work e-mail accounts are being monitored and such checks must not unduly infringe workers’ privacy, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday. In a judgment in the case of a man fired 10 years ago for using a work messaging account to communicate with his family, the judges found that Romanian courts failed to protect Bogdan Barbulescu’s private correspondence because his employer had not given him prior notice it was monitoring his communications. E-mail privacy has become a hotly contested issue as more people use work addresses for personal correspondence even as employers demand the right to monitor e-mail and computer usage to ensure staff use work email appropriately. Courts in general have sided with employers on this issue. The company had presented him with printouts of his private messages to his brother and fiancée on Yahoo Messenger as evidence of his breach of a company ban on such personal use. Ba...
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