The latest post on the official Yahoo! Messenger blog appears to be out of place to me (http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2008/01/04/recording-yahoo-messenger-calls/). It is not part of the usual suspects of promising unneeded features or unabashed promotion of Messenger. Instead it is a fairly useful commentary on how to record a Messenger phone session using third party applications. The Yahoo! Messenger blog references a New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/technology/personaltech/03ASKK-002.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) where a user asked if there is a way to record Messenger phone calls.

While most of the people will look at this piece and say how cool, I looked at it and asked the question, “is this legal?” I do not know exactly how VoIP correlates to traditional phone service, I do know that there are some fairly stringent laws on the books in the US about wiretapping. I decided to do a little research and find out if you are in danger if you use any recording program to record Yahoo! Messenger phone conversations.

In the US the law defines two cases. If you are not one of the parties involved in the conversation then listening or recording a telephone conversation is considered wiretapping and you will go to jail. The other possibility is to be one of the parties of the conversation which is most likely the case when you are using a tool described in the Messenger blog. I found out that on the federal level it is completely legal to record a telephone conversation even if the other person does not know about the recording. It is certainly courtesy to let the other party know that they are being recorded but it will not get you thrown in jail. With this comes with a few strings. Several states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington) do have a law against recording someone without their knowledge and when the telephone call takes place in one of these states you have to notify the other party. From what I have read this is usually not a big deal but you should still be aware of the law.

Given the bigger picture this is not that big of a deal to me. I don’t think anyone shouldn’t be able to sleep at night over breaking this law if it even exists in your state. The big surprise to me is that the manager of Messenger spent so much time talking about a third part application that most likely breaks the Messenger Terms of Service and produces no revenue for Yahoo! In the end I did learn something new and perhaps you will too.

http://www.rcfp.org/taping/
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs9-wrtp.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiretapping

This is why you use skype instead. It provides end-to-end encryption to ensure that this sort of crap can't happen.

Not exactly. The main gist of the article was to record the conversation if you are one of the participating parties. By the time the conversation gets to the audio form no amount of encryption will prevent it from being recorded.

The issue of whether one is allowed to record a phone call varies from state to state. I live in New Mexico. Here the legal status is that, if I am a party to the conversation, I can record it. Other states have different laws. I had an interesting issue last March. My wallet had been stolen, and unauthorized charges were made on one of the credit cards in that wallet. I wanted them removed. When I called the Customer Service number, I was told on the way in (by a recorded message) that the call "will be recorded." Not "may be" but "will be." After waiting a long time on hold, and in the midst of trying to get the charges off my account, I told the person on the other end that I was recording. He replied "You can't do that. If you don't stop, I'll terminate this conversation." I refused and he hung up.

A few months later, after closing the account and writing protest letters, I spoke to someone higher up in the company. Her position was that, by using the card, I had agreed to the terms and conditions (about 10 pages of fine print), one part of which apparently includes my agreement that I would not record conversations. Since New Mexico explicitly allows it, and the Terms (of an "adhesive" contract) forbid it, this one would have to be adjudicated in court.

Since I had already closed the account and we were arguing over about $40, it was academic, but it is an illustration of the legal complexities that can arise.

Wow that is just…wow. The fact that they hung up on you shows you how much they really want your business. I hate to say it but this is starting to become the normal approach to “customer service.” Unless you sue them you will never get their attention. I even get the feeling that asking for a supervisor would not do anything in this case. Since state law indicates that you have the right to record the conversation, next time don’t let them know, just record.