Companies need to make sure that employees are aware in advance of management monitoring of their work email accounts, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.
A Romanian man, Bogdan Barbulescu, was fired ten years ago for using a work messaging account to communicate with his family.
ECHR judges found that Romanian courts failed to protect Mr Barbulescu's private correspondence because his company had not given prior notice that it was monitoring his communications.
The company had presented him with printouts of his private messages to his brother and fiance on Yahoo Messenger as evidence of his breach of a company ban on such personal use.
The European court in Strasbourg ruled by an 11-6 majority that Romanian judges, in backing the employer, had failed to protect Mr Barbulescu's right to private life and correspondence.
