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A case once involved a worker who was not present at work due to a long-term illness. The employer was unable to obtain the employee’s consent despite repeated attempts. The employer then opened the employee’s email account, but only those emails that were business-related were read and printed. The owner did this in the presence of two eligible witnesses. Employee’s emails that were “private” and not business-related were neither read nor printed.
As a result, the employee tried to get a court order prohibiting her employer from accessing her email account in the future without her permission. The court denied her, and further repeated that her employer was not a “provider of telecommunication services”. The circumstances do not meet the criteria to fall under such a category.
The Higher Court made it clear that the employee’s use of the company’s email system is just a “side effect” of her normal daily routine. There is no adequate basis to decide that it actually falls under the scope of the Telecommunication s Act. With this present court ruling in Germany, employers can open an employee’s email account even without permission. The limitation would be that only business-related email messages in an employee’s email inbox would be opened, read or printed.
Image: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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