How we research, review, and update pages.

A page on this site is the product of two rounds of work: drafting from primary sources and a scheduled re-check on a fixed cadence. This page describes that process so you can decide how much weight to give what you read.

Source hierarchy

For every legal claim, we cite the highest-tier source we can verify. We do not cite aggregators, legal-blog summaries, or commercial call-recording sites as authority. The hierarchy:

1. Statute or regulation as published by the official codifier. For US states, that is the legislature’s own legislative-information site. For federal law, the US Code on the Office of the Law Revision Counsel site and the Code of Federal Regulations on the eCFR site. For the EU, EUR-Lex. For each foreign jurisdiction, the national gazette or government legal portal.
2. Reported case law. Court opinions retrieved from the court’s own publication system where one exists, or from a recognized reporter. We cite by name, reporter, year, and court.
3. Regulator guidance. Published guidance from the agency that enforces the relevant rule — the FCC for telecommunications carrier rules, state attorneys general for state wiretap interpretations, the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK, the CNIL in France, and so on. We cite the document, its date, and link to the regulator’s own copy.
4. Authoritative secondary sources — treatises, model rules of professional conduct, ABA opinions — where they are influential in practice. These are clearly labeled as secondary.

Drafting

A legal page begins by collecting every statute, rule, and case that bears on call recording in the jurisdiction. We read each in full, not from a summary, and we record both the operative text and the date of the version we read. Where a statute has been amended recently, we note both the current text and the change.

Drafts are written in plain English. A defined statutory term is used only after it has been defined on the page. Latin is avoided unless the term of art has no English equivalent in common use. We do not paraphrase a statute in a way that loses a material qualifier; if the statute says “knowingly,” we say “knowingly,” and we explain what courts have read that to mean.

Dates and the “last reviewed” line

Every page carries a visible Last reviewed date in both human-readable and ISO 8601 form. That date is the most recent time we re-checked the page’s legal content against primary sources. It is not the date of the page’s most recent typo fix.

A page is queued for re-review automatically on a fixed cadence:

• US state pages: every twelve months, and immediately when we learn of an amendment, a regulator advisory, or a state supreme court decision on the subject.
• Federal page: every twelve months, and immediately on any FCC rulemaking or appellate decision in this area.
• International country pages: every twelve months for English-language jurisdictions; every nine months for EU member states because of the volume of regulator guidance.
• Platform how-to pages: every six months, and immediately on any major OS or platform release that changes recording behavior.

How we test apps and platforms

App and hardware reviews are based on direct testing on hardware and software we own or have purchased. We do not accept review units we are required to return. We test on the same fixed set of criteria each time:

• Audio quality. A reference call placed under the same conditions; subjective comparison of both legs of the call.
• Notification behavior. Whether the other party hears a beep, sees a banner, or receives any signal that recording is on.
• Legality of the method. Whether the technique used (three-way call, in-line tap, screen recording, accessibility-service capture, etc.) raises issues under any common state regime.
• Retention and privacy. Where the audio file is stored, whether it leaves the device, who has access at the vendor, and what the published retention policy is.
• Cost. One-time price, subscription, and what the free tier actually allows.

Affiliate links and ads

Where an affiliate relationship exists, it is disclosed in plain English next to the link, on the same page, not in a buried footer. A review’s conclusion is not adjusted to favor an advertiser. If a vendor offers payment for placement, we decline. If a vendor asks to review draft text before publication, we decline.

Updates and corrections

When the substantive content of a page changes, we note the change in an Update history block at the bottom of the page and increment the Last reviewed date. When we get something wrong, we correct it, log it on the corrections page, and do not silently edit out the error.

What we do not do

• We do not link to other commercial recording sites as authority for legal claims.
• We do not invent compliance with statutes we cannot read in the original language. Where a jurisdiction’s law is in a language other than English, we work with a translator; if one is not available, we do not publish the page.
• We do not pretend a page has been reviewed when it has not.