€42,000 fine for adding employee in WhatsApp group during her time off

Imagine that you are relaxing in your vacation like there isn’t tomorrow. Just recharge your batteries.

You’re suddenly dragged into the work chats. It’s because they added you without your consent to a WhatsApp group by using your personal number.

A Spanish woman was the victim of this, and her employer lost a great deal of money.

The woman refused to be contacted

The Spanish Data Protection Agency has just fined LVMH Iberia, a cosmetics firm, for adding an employee to a WhatsApp group relating to work while she was on holiday.

Despite her request to not be contacted, the company called her on her private number.

She had told her managers that she did not want her personal phone number used at work. She sent an email to managers informing them that she would be stepping down from all WhatsApp groups prior to going on vacation.

In the mail she sent, she stated that she would not rejoin the company until she received her work phone. (Which, incidentally was promised to her by the firm, but never arrived).

Excuses from the company didn’t work

One day later, when she was on vacation, she joined a WhatsApp group of a company. She stayed in this group until the day of her firing, June 28, 2023. She then took her complaint to AEPD.

The company attempted to defend itself. They claimed that WhatsApp was a non-intrusive way to organize tasks and the employee hadn’t explicitly requested that they be removed permanently from the chats.

They also said that personal mobile phones were “exceptional”, not standard.

But the data protection agency wasn’t interested. They ruled that the company had no legal right to use the worker’s number without her consent, and even worse, violated her right to disconnect during holidays — something that’s protected under Spanish labour law.

The AEPD discovered two major violations

• The use of her personal information without her consent (violation of GDPR Article 6.1).
• She has not respected her right to digital disconnect.

Consent isn’t optional — and she said no

The court emphasized that consent had to be freely, informed and revocable. All of this did not happen in the case at hand. The company did not listen to the employee’s wishes.

The original fine was set at €70,000, but was later reduced to €42,000 after the company admitted fault and paid early.

The fine was not the only thing that the agency did. The agency also ordered LVMH to overhaul its internal communication policies and ensure that WhatsApp is only used on company devices.

The case sends out a clear message. Just because an app is convenient doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to pressurize employees, especially if it crosses personal boundary.