GETTY Employers can read private messages sent over the internet by workers during office hours

If you send messages to your friends and family via WhatsApp, Facebook, or any other online chat client – you should probably make sure its safe for work. The European Court of Human Rights, ECHR, has ruled that employers are allowed to read private messages sent via chat software and webmail accounts during working hours. The move comes after judges sitting in the ECHR in Strasbourg ruled a company was well within its rights when it read an employee's Yahoo Messenger chats. Bogdan Barbulescu – a Romania worker – was sacked in 2007 after his employer discovered he was accessing private messages during work hours.

GETTY The ruling affects all EU countries that have ratified the ECHR, including Britain

Mr Barbulescu had asked the court to rule the employer had breached his right to confidential correspondence when it accessed his messages – he used the app to chat to his fiancee and brother as well as professional contacts. He lost his case in Romania's domestic courts and had appealed to the ECHR. But judges have ruled Mr Barbulescu breached company rules – which prohibited the use of the messaging app for personal conversations – and therefore his employer had every right to check what he was up to. Check out the best money and time-saving WhatsApp tips and tricks from Express.co.uk, below –

This ruling now applies to every country that has ratified the European Convention on Human Rights – which includes Great Britain. In a statement, the ECHR judges said: "The employer acted within its disciplinary powers since, as the domestic courts found, it had accessed the Yahoo Messenger account on the assumption that the information in question had been related to professional activities and that such access had therefore been legitimate. "The court sees no reason to question these findings." In passing down the ruling, the judges also said that unregulated snooping on employees would not be acceptable, and called on a set of polices to be drawn up by employers that would clearly state what information they could collect and how.