General information about laws you should know when using ServiceTitan's call recording services. Updated February 22, 2021.

General Rules Applicable to All Calls

Federal, provincial and state wiretap laws in the U.S. and in Canada generally prohibit listening in on phone calls, recording phone calls, or both, unless you have obtained sufficient consent from the call participants. If you are a party to the call, then you have provided your consent. In some jurisdictions, however, the applicable law requires the consent of all the parties of the call – not just you. The wiretap laws generally apply whether you are on a call using a landline phone, a cell phone, or calling a number using a computer/web phone.

Location is Key

Nearly every jurisdiction in the U.S. and in Canada has adopted a wiretap, eavesdropping, intrusion, or related law, and they vary. This means that whether an activity is lawful or not depends, often, on the laws in the states where the participants in the call are located. Some states treat these issues as criminal offenses, others treat them as civil offenses, and some treat them as both. For example, federal wiretap laws allow violators to be criminally prosecuted and/or sued by a private party harmed by the act (a "private right of action").

One-Party versus Two-Party Consent

Under federal law and in most states in the U.S., the recording of telephone calls is permitted with the consent of one of the parties to the call. These are called "one-party consent" laws and generally require one of the persons participating and recording the call to provide consent to make the call recording lawful. For example, if you are on a call in a one-party consent state and talking to another person in the same state, you can generally record the call. In some but not all one-party states, recording of a call is permitted if a third-party (for example, an employer) has obtained prior consent from one of the participants (for example, an employee) and knows that the call will be recorded.

In a minority of states, in the District of Columbia and in Canada, however, every party on a call—that is, you, your employee, and your customer—must provide consent to the recording for it to be lawful. In those cases, employees and other members of your personnel may consent in advance to those recordings by consenting to sufficiently detailed internal privacy policies.

Obtaining Consent

In many jurisdictions, consent must be obtained prior to the recording, meaning that getting consent after the fact cannot is insufficient. Jurisdictions also vary in terms of how explicit the consent on the part of the recorded party must be. And, as mentioned above, whether you need the consent of all call participants varies by location and may be difficult to figure out. A best practice is to obtain consent from all parties at the beginning of a call. In the United States, this can be done by providing a statement that the call may or will be recorded, and if the other party does not object, continuing with the call.

Last updated: February 22, 2021.