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Recording Telephone Calls Without Customer Consent Contravenes PIPEDA
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada recently reprimanded a bank, for the second time, regarding its policies and practices regarding the recording of its customers' telephone calls. In both cases, when customers objected to being recorded, they were told that the recordings could not be stopped and were offered no alternative means of activating their credit cards, even though those alternatives existed.
In the most recent case, when the customer called the bank and was informed of its practice of recording calls, he immediately objected. Both the agent and a supervisor advised him that the recording could not be stopped and neither offered him an alternate means to activate his credit card. When he requested that the recording be erased, the bank responded initially that the recording was necessary for its records, and subsequently that it would be impossible to isolate his conversation due to the number of recordings.
The decision turned on the Privacy Commissioner's interpretation of consent and the reasonable expectations of the customer regarding such consent as per Principles 4.3 and 4.3.5 of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The bank took the position that the customer had consented to the recordings by virtue of information booklets that described the bank's policies and terms and conditions with respect to the customer's credit card accounts, which information, the complainant did not recall receiving.
The Privacy Commissioner found that the reasonable expectations of the customer would dictate that the information about telephone recording practices would be included in the instructions for credit card activation. In order for the bank to comply with Principle 4.1.4, which provides that organizations must implement policies and practices to give effect to the Act's Principles, the bank would have had to draw the customer's attention to the purpose of the collection at the time of its collection. The underlying purpose behind informing the customer of this information collection is to allow the customer the opportunity to decide whether or not to consent. The Privacy Commissioner found that the bank did not obtain the customer's consent to the recordings, nor did it provide the customer with alternatives to activation by phone, and had not implemented "best practices" regarding telephone recordings for which it had already been found to be in contravention of PIPEDA.
For a copy of the Privacy Commissioner's findings, visit: