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Comment by teraflop | Hacker News Reader

If you find yourself doing this kind of thing:

> Defendants also used a “verification rebuttal” script that instructed employees to provide different and conflicting answers to consumers’ common questions depending on whether the verification was recorded or not. Id. ¶ 14(d). One “on recording” rebuttal stated that Defendants’ products “are not [h]ealth [i]insurance,” and the corresponding “off recording” rebuttal stated “[t]his is health insurance.”

then you should not be at all surprised when you get sued into oblivion.

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Why not? The smartphone manufacturers do everything they can to fight the ability of consumers to record, so I expect companies could get away with this for quite some time.

Deleted, because apparently information about call recording offended some people.

What are the options for the rest of us plebs without rooted phones?

I'm almost certain Cogi will record calls.

I've used Call Recorder from f-droid but success will vary across phone manufacturers.

Older phones perhaps? I am using Galaxy S8+, Model number: SC-03J. Been recording calls for the last 6 years.

Using an old phone that no longer receives updates is an unacceptable security risk.

I have a Voip line (ring central) for this exact reason which records all calls in/out by default. Its annoying because RC forces you to play a recording (until you upload empty mp3). Its 50$/mo and for some reason call quality can be pretty terrible sometimes. Part of my todo list is to attempt to find another solution. I also carry a usb recording device on my keychain that is pretty good at picking up a conversation.

There are reasons as to why, but basically all of my business interactions one way or another are recorded.

My Android (Pixel) records just fine.

As I found out recently, these features are Geo-locked. Both Pixel & Galaxy phones have this functionality built into the Phone/Dialler app.

In the UK, despite that it's legal for individuals to record their own calls without any consent or notification to the other party, these foreign companies have decided that it's either illegal, or that we're just now allowed to use it, and the features are disabled.

The built-in options are therefore unavailable, and Google seems to have gone on a crusade to make sure these apps in the Play Store are nerfed or removed. APIs that apps could use to provide this functionality have been removed and the only option now is to use he accessibility APIs which involve manually installing apks, and dismissing scary warnings. I don't expect this will work for much longer.

Where's Stallman when you need him...

> Where's Stallman when you need him...

Busy on his crusade of 'perfection', and absolute refusal of using any smartphone cause some chip is closed source.

But the tincan and aluminum foil helmet network is completely open /sigh

We need a new Stallman who doesn't let perfection be the enemy of good.

We need a new Stallman who doesn't let perfection be the enemy of good.

Sometimes I share this sentiment, but sometimes I think that its foolish to try to build on top of a rotten foundation. You might be able to build what looks like a livable house on top of a rotten foundation, and those who object will have this charge leveled at them. And it will seem reasonable, precisely up to the moment the foundation fails and the house catastrophically falls apart.

The closed chips, closed microcode, closed firmware layers are a rotten foundation that happens to support the modern internet well-enough to provide an illusion of solidity. Of course Stallman can object until he's blue in the face, it will take a demonstration, a real collapse, for people to really understand the problem. Lots of possibilities there, with everyone's favorite being a Sino-US war over Taiwan with a heavy cyber component which targets these components, particularly power infrastructure, and the US realizes it no longer has the capacity to recover from such a blow, and such capacity was lost 2 generations of engineers ago. Mere argument becomes irrelevant at that point, because Nature doesn't care about argument, She only cares about Survival.

That's partially related to legal issues. Europe's GDPR makes the entire EU two-party consent (and some jurisdictions like DE/NL actually make secret recordings a crime), a lot of the US states are two-party consent as well... and so, instead of having to deal with compliance with these laws, they just block this ability entirely.

> Europe's GDPR makes the entire EU two-party consent

This is false. Finland is part of the EU and recording conversations in Finland only requires one-party consent.

Surely they can provide the option, it's up to the end user to seek legally necessary consent before activating the recording feature.

GDPR makes the legality of recording personal information depend on who you are and what you intend to do with it. It's not a blanket ban, and in particular it's fine to record your own calls to a corporation, which by definition cannot have personal data.

> Europe's GDPR makes the entire EU two-party consent

False. A business might be required to inform you that they are recording, but many EU member states have one-party consent laws otherwise. For instance, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Denmark, Netherlands, Poland and Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_call_recording_laws

Gdpr doesn't stop recordings...they just tell you it may be used for "training puropses".

To some extent I understand why Google and Android OEMs don't include call recording apps pre-installed on their phone, as laws vary by jurisdiction and change over time. I also understand why Google wouldn't want them on the Play Store for the same reason.

What I don't understand is why they removed the API for it, as it seems very unlikely they would be held responsable for users sideloading call recording apps in places where it's not legal. Nearly every Windows, Mac and Linux desktop/laptop can use OBS or dozens of other apps to record calls through Slack, Discord, Teams, Skype, or any other VoIP app, regardless of the legality of the action in your local area. As far as I'm aware, Microsoft, Apple and various Linux distros have never been sued for that (or even OBS and other apps.)

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea of everything I've ever said in a phone call potentially being recorded. However, I'd much rather my in-person conversations not be recorded than what I say in phone calls, but no device takes any measures to prevent that: anyone can just start their audio recording app on their phone, turn their screen brightness down and then put it on the table (where my voice will be easily picked up) without me knowing it's recording. That happens to be legal in my State, but it can be done regardless of legality anywhere on any Android or iOS phone.

I'm lucky enough that I've never been threatened over the phone. Cheap products aside, I've also never been scammed. I've also never had an employer, coworker, politician or government worker that I know commit a crime and discuss it over the phone to me. However, I don't think we should inhibit victims of abuse, scams, people receiving threats, whistleblowers, or other witnesses to crime from sharing that evidence in a court of law (or with the public in my opinion — if someone threatens me, I think I deserve the right to let the public know that.)

However, if phone calls were recorded by default on most devices, while it would help keep certain companies more accountable towards their users, I think for other crimes (such as violent threats) it'd just shift them to be in-person, which could be more dangerous. By the default being off, people who are victims of or witnesses of crime might get a chance to call record without the perpetrator knowing. What I find very frustrating though is that Google and Apple prohibit you from recording calls without rooting, jailbreaking or using an external device. I'm not asking for it to be the default, I'm just asking for the freedom to do so, even if it requires 3rd party software to achieve.

It's particularly interesting on Android 14 because apps could in theory use Accessibility Service to record phone calls, but Google prohibits apps from doing so on the Play Store. You should be able to just sideload them then, right? Nope, as of Android 14, side-loaded apps are unable to activate Accessibility Service at all. There are workarounds depending on the device, but in any case you're limited to recording from microphone or loud speaker (can't use wired or Bluetooth headphones.)

Yeah, but at the first sniff of it happening you're gonna get sued, and then it's going to appear in discovery and there's no chance you can claim you didn't know what you were doing.

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