It’s all over the news, so you’ve probably seen by now that your boss is officially allowed to snoop through your private messages and emails, after the ruling from the European Court of Human Rights last week (12 January 2016, to be precise). What you may not know, however, is that it doesn’t mean employers have unlimited access to your every communication. You still have privacy rights, so don’t fret. Here’s how to keep your private conversations private, whilst still adhering to the law—the “fine-print details”, if you will.
The Ruling
Last week, everyone started panicking after hearing the ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judges saying that employers can now legally read employees’ private communications; such as messages through Facebook, WhatsApp, email, text—basically any chat software or webmail account. It all started with a Romanian engineer, Bogdan Barbulescu, who was fired from his job for sending messages to his brother and fiancée through Yahoo Messenger on a work device. These messages were said to have been about his “health and sex life” amongst other topics.
Barbulescu took his case to court, claiming his employer had breached article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which says “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.” Because these messages were sent during work hours on a company-owned device, though, the ECHR judges sided with Barbulescu’s employer. The judges said “it is not unreasonable for an employer to want to verify that the employees are completing their professional tasks during working hours.”
Click to read the full judgement of the Barbulescu v. Romania case
How this Affects Britain
The ruling applies to all EU countries that have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights. Britain is one of these countries. These are the other countries included:
Click here for a full list of included countries
How this Affects You
Yes, your bosses can monitor all your messages and communications from any software or app, even services like Skype (it’s harder to imagine something more awkward than your boss spying on your video chats, yikes!)—but (and this is the most important part of it all), they can only monitor communications sent during work hours or from a work device.
Employers Cannot Monitor Your Personal Devices
Even if you are sending private messages throughout the entire work day (we’re not suggesting you actually do this, though, if you want to keep your job), your boss can’t read them if they’re sent from your personal phone. Because this ruling has gained so much negative publicity from the media, all seeming to omit the fact that it only applies to work devices, the judges want to make sure there is a definitive line of what is allowed and what is not. They said that unregulated snooping on employees is still not acceptable, and employers must draw up a set of policies stating clearly what information they are allowed to collect and how.
Summary
This all makes perfect sense, really. If you have a work phone, the company owns it. It isn’t your property. It seems only fair, then, that the company is allowed to access the contents of its own property. All of the media hype has put everyone into an unnecessary frenzy. Basically, just be smart. Use your work devices for work messages, and use your personal devices for personal messages. Simple. You can take a nice, deep breath now—crisis averted!
