Phone Conversation Recorders

There are many times when you need to record a phone conversation. For those times, there are basically two options available to you. You can buy a telephone tape recorder or a digital voice recorder with a built in telephone recorder.

Before recording a conversation, however, you should consider the legal issues. While videotaping someone without his/her knowledge is legal in all 50 states, recording someone's voice without his/her knowledge is illegal in 15 states. These states include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington. These are called two-party states and you must by law notify the person on the other end of the line that the call is being recorded.

Using Phone Conversation Recorders

Most phone conversation recorders have dual usage capabilities. That is to say that they are not limited to recording only phone conversations. They can be used to record live conversations as well.

Some of the high-end recorders have multiple features that make them extremely easy to use. For example, the recorder can be voice-activated, line-activated, timer-activated and/or manually activated. When a recorder is line-activated the machine can basically operate itself and does not need to be babysat. Whenever the line is in use, the recorder will run. Some recorders also have a caller ID feature as well as a date and time stamp feature. This allows the additional information about the call to be stored along with the voice recording. These features, however, are only available on the premium recorders.