7 ms·
Important not-a-lawyer advice: recording phone calls without the other party's consent is illegal in wide swathes of the U.S., but keeping copies of letters is
by patio11 9y ago
Important not-a-lawyer advice: recording phone calls without the other party's consent is illegal in wide swathes of the U.S., but keeping copies of letters is legal everywhere.
- kejaed 9y agoAre you automatically covered if they give the standard boilerplate that they are recording the call?
- ptero 9y agoIANAL either, but I think either of informing the party upfront or soft beeps in the background are acceptable.
- snowpanda 9y agoThat's a great question, this might be of interest to you: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/5614/if-other-party-notified-me-that-phone-conversation-is-being-recorded-do-i-need https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/5614/if-other-party-... The top answer states: >Once AT&T, or anyone else for that matter, states that the communication is being recorded, it is no longer considered a confidential communication requiring the consent of all parties in order for any party to record it.
- milkytron 9y agoThis is correct, if anyone is considering this then definitely look into your state laws before proceeding.
- AmIFirstToThink 9y agoQuestion: When the party states that "this call may be recorded for quality or training purposes", does that give you reciprocal permission to record the call or do you have to explicitly ask for it? Any lawyers with opinion on this?
- sly010 9y agoPerhaps answering every notice of recording with "me too" is enough?
- thecrazyone 9y agoWow! this is a good one. I would love to hear a lawyer's take on this to see if this is notice enough. Seems like it though :)
- carbocation 9y agoIf I tell someone "my nose may be touched" then I'm allowing them to touch my nose. If I tell someone "this call may be recorded", then surely I'm giving them permission to record the call. Their ability to detect my lies seems to be a reasonable "quality" purpose.
- chias 9y agoYou would be intentionally conflating two different definitions of the homograph "may" (i.e. permission "you are allowed to X" versus possibility "X might happen"). You could argue that "any reasonable person" would have interpreted the "may" in that statement as giving you permission to record the call for training purposes (as opposed to letting you know that your call might be recorded for training purposes), but I wouldn't want to be in you shoes when you try. Just tell them that you're recording the call too, and sidestep the issue entirely.
- gsnedders 9y agoThis again varies between jurisdictions, as far as I'm aware.
- 9y ago
- didibus 9y agoI wonder if this law still makes sense. I feel it could be altered to say that recording someone without them even knowing you are listening should be illegal, but I don't see why it should be illegal to record a consenting conversation between two people. Btw, does it apply to video recording as well?
- mark212 9y agoGenerally the laws on video recording are based on where the camera operator is standing while filming. If you have a lawful right to be where you are, it's probably ok to make a video. But take a look at the facts in Shulman v. Group W Production, Inc. (1998) 18 Cal. 4th 200, where the camera crew was lawfully present but intruded on a private encounter. Very much depends on context, at least in California.
- pwg 9y agoYes, check your states laws. Some states are two-party consent, but a good number are one-party consent states. And in a one-party consent state you recording yourself is legal without the other parties knowledge because you gave your consent to make the recording of yourself.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoAs a maverick not a lawyer, it's worth noting that what this means in practice is that evidence of a crime obtained by illegally recording a telephone conversation may not be admissible in court. I say may not be because a judge could decide to allow the evidence if the alleged crime is sufficiently serious. It's extraordinarily unlikely a criminal or civil case will be brought against you because you revealed to a company that you recorded a support call to them, especially if the content of those calls reveals impropriety on their behalf. What probably would be a problem is if you recorded a telephone conversation with the intent to, or actually causing, harm. At least, that's my lay understanding of how things might go.
- didibus 9y agoHow do you record the consent itself? Or is it going to be a case of he said/she said? I'd assume you'd need proof that you had asked for consent prior.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago> How do you record the consent itself? I suppose using a call recording device for a fixed line telephone, or an app for a smartphone. > I'd assume you'd need proof that you had asked for consent prior. My point is: even if you neglect to ask for consent, no company is going to sic their lawyers on you if you play back to them a call recording that proves they lied and therefore failed to meet their contractual obligations. Edit: Oh, sorry, I see what you mean now about recording consent. You start by recording the call by default, if the other party requests the call not be recorded you cease recording. It would probably be okay to retain that portion of the recording.
- ballenf 9y agoThe pedantic way (and maybe required under some theoretic draconian regulatory environment): - no active recording - Mr. Wants-to-record: "May I record this phone call?" Ms. Recordee: "Ok" - start recording - Mr. Wants-to-record: "I am now recording based on the permission you just gave prior to starting recording. Are we in agreement?" Ms. Recordee: "Yep" ---- FWIW, I've had conversations pretty close to that when doing mortgage applications over the phone.
- nugator 9y agoIt is legal in, for example, Sweden: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws
- qrbLPHiKpiux 9y agoAnd here I am, fascinated, with all the technology available today, paper and pen is the gold standard.
- Natsu 9y agoDue to getting a new cell phone number that apparently once belonged to a deadbeat I know nothing about, I got a large number of debt collector calls. I wish I had a good way to get their address and record who is calling. The only problem is that they all ask for <name>, give me no information about themselves, and hang up right away. I blocked a lot of them, but there's no good way to make that go away.
- mark212 9y agoThe federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 USC 227) says that each of these calls is worth $500 minimum in statutory damages -- and may be trebled to $1500 per call if shown to be willful. Assuming you live in the US, this is a great case and you should keep track of the calls.
- Girlang 9y agoWrong! The law only protects actual deadbeats who continue to get calls after they request that they stop.
- Natsu 9y agoProblem is that they never identify themselves, they just say "we're looking for [xyz]" and hang up when I say I'm not them. I can't keep them on the call and the caller ID is faked to be some random local number.