A man in Romania has been told his employer was within its right to check private messages he sent using a Yahoo Messanger account he set up for work.
The man was using a device owned by his work to send personal messages to his fiance and brother. The company said its policy states that employers cannot use professional accounts to send personal messages.
The European Court of Human Rights said the man had breached the company's rules and that his employer had a right to check his activities.
The worker had hoped the court would find that his employer had breached his right to confidential correspondence when it accessed his messages before sacking him in 2007.
The Judge said that, because the company believed it was accessing a work account, it had done nothing wrong.
The court added that it was not "unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours".
In passing down the ruling, the ECHR also said unregulated snooping on employees would not be acceptable, and called for polices to be drawn up by employers that would clearly state what information they could collect and how.
