An employee opened, during his work for the employer and without its knowledge, competing companies, and when his actions were discovered by the employer the employer entered the e-mail mailbox used by the employee and used the materials discovered in such mailboxes to prove the competing actions.
The Court held that the employer had the right to access the employee's mailbox. Regarding the mailboxes of employees, a balance must be struck between the employee's right to privacy in the workplace and the employer's property right in regards to computer use and e-mail correspondence. First, one must differentiate between several types of mailboxes: a professional box owned by the employer, a mixed box owned by the employer and a personal box of the employee. In a professional box owned by the employer, the employer may carry out legitimate and proportional monitoring, provided that he gives the employees advanced notice of this. However, in a mixed box, the employer is not allowed to access the employee's personal correspondence unless there is a clear basis to suspect inappropriate activity on the part of the employee and after alternative and less offensive options were exhausted. A personal box is the employee's private property and the employer may not enter it without a court order. Here, the box was a mixed box, but the employee knew that the employer could enter the box at any time, the employer had a reasonable suspicion that the employee was engaged in improper activities and the employer did not use materials of a personal nature in the box unrelated to the employee's professional dealings, and therefore there was no violation of the employee's privacy and entry into the box was permitted.