Imagine you’re at work and you want to fire off a quick message to your girlfriend. What could be easier and more convenient than using your company’s instant messaging system. Right? After all, it’s not as though anyone in the company will ever come across your message and, even if they do, they would be prevented from reading it or using it to discipline you because of your right to privacy. Right?

Wrong, as an employee in Romania learnt to his detriment.

The employee in question, Mr Bărbulescu, was tasked with setting up an instant messaging account in Yahoo Messenger to allow the company to handle customer complaints. Mr B regularly used the account to message his fiancée and brother despite this being expressly forbidden by the company’s workplace policy. When Mr B’s misuse of the instant messaging account came to light, he was dismissed. Mr B disputed the fairness of the dismissal, arguing that the company had breached his right to privacy by accessing and making use of his personal messages. The case made its way through the local courts and eventually ended up in the European Court of Human Rights.

The Court decided that the employer acted fairly. It acknowledged there was a balance between an individual’s right to privacy and an employer’s right to ensure its IT systems were being used for professional purposes only. In Mr B’s case, a fair balance had been struck. The employer had accessed Mr B’s personal messages only so far as was necessary to establish that Mr B had been using its instant messaging account for his own personal ends.

The case is a warning to employees that they cannot blithely use their company’s email and instant messaging systems for personal reasons in the assumption that their right to privacy is preserved at all costs. If their employer has a policy that clearly says such use is forbidden and they have been made aware of this restriction, then privacy law will not protect their correspondence from their employer’s prying eyes.