This Call May Be Monitored or Recorded for Quality Assurance and Training Purposes: The Risks of Recording Business Calls

You might ask what Vice-President Kamala Harris was best known for prior to becoming the first female vice-president in U.S. history.

One piece of notoriety was, as Attorney General of the State of California, she oversaw the prosecution of Wells Fargo & Company, the American multinational bank and financial services company for violation of §§ 632 and 632.7 of the California Penal Code.

The allegation was that the company failed to timely and adequately disclose its automatic recording of phone calls with members of the public.

That criminal prosecution led to a settlement in which Wells Fargo paid total fines of $7,616,000, reimbursed the prosecutors’ investigative costs of $384,000, and agreed to contribute $500,000 to two statewide organizations dedicated to advancing consumer protection and privacy rights.

The previous year, Attorney General Harris reached a similar settlement with Houzz, Inc., an online platform for home remodeling and design. Houzz, Inc. had been recording incoming and outgoing telephone calls but failing to notify all parties on the call that they were being recorded.