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Comment by sixothree | Hacker News Reader

Is it true that if a business states that “calls may be recorded” then no matter where you live, it’s legal to record the call as well.

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Yes. The most aggressive consent requirement for recording is 'two-party' consent, where the both people on the call need to be aware it's being recorded. If you say "this is/may be(ing) recorded" then both parties are aware.

If you tell a company calling that you might also be recording I found they like to end the call fast. Funny how it’s okay if they do it and hold all the evidence…

Yes, in a previous life I did some soul-sucking call center work for a large national mobile company and they specifically had a written policy at the root level of their knowledgeable system about call recording. Their instructions were that if anyone was recording the call you were to read a certain script and immediately disconnect, no questions asked. If they tried to do the 'this call may be recorded' thing you were supposed to seek clarification about whether the call is being recorded and if the answer was anything other than no, you were to read the same script and immediately disconnect.

These companies know that worker bee call center drones say things all the time that the company doesn't want preserved in a court of law later- mainly promises that the company doesn't want to have to uphold if they were outside policy. They take it very seriously. I suspect any major company with something to lose has a similar policy.

Nitpick but the two-party standard is actually "all party" to cover scenarios where there are more than two parties participating in the conversation.

In the US it's either one party (the majority of states) or all party.

Not in Germany. You have to get explicit permission or at least give the chance to deny consent, just because you consent doesn't mean the recording party did. It's a bit sad, IMO.

What I do is I inform and get consent from hotline agents during the call.

I am not a lawyer. This has a nice summary: https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-call...

If a business states that the call may be recorded, then they are already consenting. Therefore your recording would be the 2nd party consenting.

In the first paragraph on that page, it says:

"Determining which jurisdiction’s law controls in cases involving recording devices or parties in multiple states can be complex, so it is likely best to adhere to the strictest applicable law when in doubt, and/or get the clear consent of all parties before recording."

So it doesn't seem to be simple to determine what's legal in any given situation.

Staying on the line after being notified the other party is probably going to start recording soon is essentially giving consent. The caller could have just hung up if they didn't want to be recorded.

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