Parents allowed to read their kids' Whatsapp messages, Spanish court rules

Now your WhatsApp messages are not so safe with a Spanish court ruling on Sunday that parents and guardians can monitor social media use by children and read their WhatsApp messages.

In the ruling, the European court has put the rights and responsibilities of parents over their children above privacy laws. 

The court in the northern Spanish city of Pontevedra was quoted: “The development of social networks, as well as WhatsApp, requires attention and vigilance of the parents to preserve the indemnity of minors."

As reported by a digital news website, a divorced father of two in Spain won the right to read his children's WhatsApp messages as a result of this ruling. 

Earlier the man was facing the charge of breaching the privacy right of his daughter after he read her WhatsApp chats.

The man was sued by his ex-wife, according to the report. 

She told a leading local daily, "Both my kids told me that their father took them to their bedrooms and went over my daughter’s conversations with them.”

A lower court in the region earlier backed the mother saying that reading WhatsApp conversations of their daughter by her former husband amounted to breaching the children’s right to privacy, an offence that carries a sentence of up to four years in prison as well as a fine.

Judges in the higher Pontevedra court, however, ruled that ultimately both parents had a greater right “to watch over” their children.