10 July 2017, 14:48 GMT
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The German Federal Labor Court ruled on Thursday that the use of keylogger software by employers to control their workers is illegal.
“The use of keylogger software that records all keyboard inputs to survey and control over an employee is inadmissible under § 32 (1) of the BDSG [Federal Data Protection Act] if they are used without well-founded suspicions of a crime or another serious breach of duty based on specific facts,” the court’s statement said.
The verdict was made after a complaint of an employee of a media agency in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, who was fired in 2015 less than a month after installation of the keylogger software by the company.
The employee was accused by the company’s leadership of working for another company while being in the office. The Federal Labor Court decided that the data about the worker had been obtained illegally.
