Belgium: a judgement on internet surfing for private matters

In a judgment from August 29, 2007, the Hasselt labour court rendered an interesting judgment about how to use emails and the internet at work. It approved the dismissal because of serious misconduct of an employee who had bypassed, for personal purposes, the informatics shields his employer had set up. (Ref. 070764.)
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In this case, an employer, advised by the Claeys & Engel cabinet, had limited the access to the internet by installing a new firewall while adopting directive for employees using emails and the internet. This document was handed out to every employee after signature. Thus, employees were aware of the fact that the employer could monitor the workers comply with the rule. To break away from these controls, an employee had gotten, thanks to the former firewall, an internet access in order to, nota

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