Are one sided recorded calls legal?
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Are one sided recorded calls legal?
I work from home in Arizona. I am a full time employee with a California based
company with a company issued phone. They are requesting me to make sales
call thru a Call tracking system. They said I don’t need to make the clients I’m
calling aware. Also I happen to find out that all inbound calls received on the work
phone are recorded.
Is is legal to record my calls with clients without their knowledge and is it legal to
record my incoming calls without my knowledge or clients?
Asked on November 9, 2016 under Employment Labor Law, Arizona
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 7 years ago | Contributor
Be careful: doing this would be legal (not really ethical, but legal) in the state identified in your question, if both you and the person you are speaking to are in AZ; AZ is a "one-party" consent state, which means recording a conversation is legal as long as one of the people on the call consents to it. Since if you are on the call and are recording it, by definition you consent to your own recording; therefore, you don't need the consent, or even knowledge, of the other person on the call.
But some states require the consent of *everyone* on the phone call to the recording (these are called "two party consent" states, but a more accurate term would be "all party consent" state). If someone on the call is in one of those states, you'd be breaking the law (possibly commiting a felony) to record them without their consent. It is *much* the better practice to let them know you are recording them, so they have the chance to consent or not.
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