Yes, your boss can monitor your emails and your web browsing – ZDNet France

The case dates back to 2007. That year, a Romanian employee is dismissed for use Yahoo Messenger for personal purposes. This sanction was made possible by monitoring online tools posted by his employer. The employee was then applied to the justice of his country, saying that his company had violated the secrecy of correspondence and respect of privacy. He was then dismissed even call it.

As of last resort, then the employee had applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The Supreme Court has just made its decision confirming the first verdict: yes, your boss can monitor your emails and your web browsing provided the bylaws provides. Impact: A dismissal may well be motivated by the unauthorized use of these tools.

To the Court, it is “not an abusive employer wants to ensure that its employees perform their professional duties during working hours.” In that case, “the employer has accessed the account (of the employee) thinking it contained communications thereof with its customers,” adds the ECHR.

The judges also estimated that the argument of the rape of secrecy of correspondence could not be retained as court decisions “made no mention of the actual content of the communications.”

In addition, the Romanian courts “used the records of these communications only insofar as they proved that he had used his company computer for private purposes during working hours, and the identity of those with whom he communicated was not disclosed, “noted the European judges even though the topic of discussion has been made public ….

“Accordingly, the Court concludes that the domestic courts had struck a fair balance between the applicant’s right to respect for his private life and his correspondence and that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence, has not been violated “.

The European decision is in line with several verdicts in France. In several cases, employees were dismissed for abuse of the Internet at work, stops confirmed appeal and cassation. Thus, in a judgment of 13 January 2015, the Court of Appeal of Aix-en-Provence has validated the dismissal for misconduct of an employee: one hour overdone it on the Web for personal purposes during work hours .