There are various needs that appear whenever looking at call recording. Because of the fact that technology changed and everything is transforming towards a more mobile approach, companies started to utilized call recording. The problem is that whenever you record a phone call you have to take into account how legal this process is.
When referring to wiretapping laws linked to law enforcement and government activities, the things are quite clear but when referring to laws that focus on civilian use, there are differences that can appear based on country or state jurisdiction. Laws are created in order to protect individual privacy and they are a huge part of the democratic process. It is basically illegal to use call recording in most possible cases.
When referring to USA, we have states in which there is a need to use 2 party notification and states where just 1 party notification is necessary. This basically means that 2 parties or just 1 party need to be properly informed that call recording is done. The FCC forces you to make a notification that the phone call is recorded and only after consent is given the conversation can actually be recorded. Notification forms that are necessary include:
- During call course observable beep tones can be repeated regularly.
- Before making a recording a verbal notification can be given. This is the most common method used these days.
- Before phone conversations are initiated, written or verbal consent is necessary.
There are many different businesses that are currently recording phone conversations because of a need to have proof, train staff or monitor employee performance. In some jurisdictions you cannot consider this as being phone tapping due to the fact that one party is aware of the call recording that is done. In all 2 party states it is important to have all the people in the conversation know that recording is used. There is no legal way around that.
Most services that have call recording capacity (i.e. Google Voice) do enforce call recording notifications. As soon as a recording is activated, there is a pre-recorded voice that is heard and that lets participants know that recording started.
Companies are guarded by law if there is a proper use of notification when referring to call recording. For instance, when you call a bank, you will most likely hear a message telling you that the conversation will be recorded or may be recorded. This protects the bank because the person making the call can decide not to continue the conversation if he/she does not want to be recorded.
By Sam Hurley; a Digital Marketing Consultant at http://www.fdcstudio.co.uk/ providing Digital Marketing Services throughout the UK