Supreme Court rules employee mobiles can’t be tracked without consent

After taking his case to three courts in Hungary’s judicial system, a Hungarian employee won in an important privacy case against his employer. After learning that his employer installed a mobile phone location tracker on the phone they provided for his work, he chose to immediately terminate his contract. The reason for the immediate employment termination was that the employer installed the software on the phone without his consent breaching his privacy by tracking him after work as well. The Supreme Court (Hungary’s Curia) ruled that the breach of privacy was a sufficient ground for the immediate employment termination. According to the judgment, employers are not allowed to collect location data about the employees without consent.

The original Hungarian language text was posted on 21 January 2014.