Can My Employer See My LinkedIn Messages?

Recently a client asked me: “Can my employer see my messages?” I answered no, they cannot. And I was wondering, why is everyone so fixating on that? Your employer is no Merlyn the wizard and unless you are not working at an intelligent agency, why should they even consider reading your messages?

They are not legally allowed to do that and if it is proved that they’ve been reading their employees’ messages without notifying them, they can be sued. Thankfully LinkedIn has a very strong privacy policy and the messages are end-to-end in it. So there really is no reason to get concerned over the issue.

Even if you have agreed to a clause in your contract that gives your employee the right to explore your messages (which is highly improbable), you can tell them to do it under your supervision, otherwise, they have no right to do it.

Such a clause is like if the company asks you to agree that your manager or the employer crash into your bedroom every time they want (who does that?).

We are not living in the era of Oliver Twist, every employee has a right to have their own life, they can sue their employers, etc.

But why should an employer want to have access to your messages? Since this client of mine asked this question, he must have encountered such a situation, for he is not an employer as far as I know.

The reason why the employer might ask such a thing can be that they are worried that the employee might share some critical company information with a third party and they might cause the company loss or if they gave away some details about a product or service that is to be launched in near future to a competitive corporation.

They can also be simply paranoid which in that case I usually recommend quitting that company ASAP.

So, can my employee see my Linked messages? No, they cannot. It is neither legal nor ethical to ask such a thing.

If you encounter this problem, you can either reject it or tell them that it is only possible under your own supervision. Don’t be afraid of the objection, stand for your natural rights.