Massachusetts call recording law and the AI receptionist: what the first seconds must say

In short: Massachusetts call recording law turns on secrecy, so an AI receptionist can record calls when every caller knows it before the conversation starts. The wiretap act, M.G.L. c. 272 s. 99, defines the offence as to "secretly hear, secretly record" a call, and the courts ask whether the caller actually knew, so the working rule is an announcement in the first seconds, before the caller says anything, and a record that it played. Recording a call in secret on purpose is a crime carrying a fine of up to $10,000 and up to five years in state prison, and each person recorded secretly can sue for at least $1,000, or $100 for each day of violation if that is higher, plus punitive damages and legal fees. Federal law and Ontario law both need only one party's consent, which is why a system built for a Toronto line cannot move to Boston unchanged.

Key takeaways

• The statute's test is secrecy. A recording the caller has been told about is not an "interception" under s. 99 B.4, whether or not the caller said yes.
• Put the notice before the first question. A caller who has already given a unit number and a complaint before hearing "this call is recorded" was recorded without knowing it for those seconds.
• A callback, an outbound reminder, or a warm transfer that brings in someone new needs its own notice.
• A recording becomes "personal information" under Massachusetts data security law only when a caller gives their name with a Social Security number, a driver's licence or state ID number, or a financial account or card number.
• The penalties reach anyone who "permits" a secret recording or has one made on their behalf (s. 99 C.6), so a property manager cannot hand the question to the vendor.

What the statute actually says

Section 99's preamble states the rule in one line: "the secret use of such devices by private individuals must be prohibited." The rest hangs off paragraph B.4, which defines interception as:

"to secretly hear, secretly record, or aid another to secretly hear or secretly record the contents of any wire or oral communication through the use of any intercepting device by any person other than a person given prior authority by all parties to such communication"

So a recording falls outside the offence in two ways: it is not secret, or everyone on the call gave prior authority. The second route is where "all-party consent" comes from. The first is the one an AI receptionist uses: a recorded greeting tells every caller, every time.

The penalties are in paragraph C. Willfully intercepting, attempting to, or procuring someone else to do it carries a fine of up to $10,000, up to five years in state prison or two and a half years in a jail or house of correction, or a fine and one of those (C.1). Willfully disclosing or using what was captured, knowing it came from an unlawful interception, is a separate offence under C.3: up to two years, a fine of up to $5,000, or both. Paragraph C.6 extends both to anyone who "permits or on behalf of any other person commits" the offence.

The civil remedy is paragraph Q: actual damages "but not less than liquidated damages computed at the rate of $100 per day for each day of violation or $1000, whichever is higher", punitive damages, and a reasonable attorney's fee. That floor applies caller by caller, and a main line takes a lot of callers.

What the Supreme Judicial Court has said about "secretly"

In Commonwealth v. Jackson, 370 Mass. 502 (1976), the Supreme Judicial Court concluded that "the Legislature intended that the statutory restrictions be applicable only to the secret use of such devices", held that the portions of two calls recorded after the caller showed he knew about the recording were not "interceptions", and set the evidence test: actual knowledge "is proved where there are clear and unequivocal objective manifestations of knowledge."

In Commonwealth v. Hyde, 434 Mass. 594 (2001), a driver secretly taped the police officers who stopped him. The court held that s. 99 "strictly prohibits the secret electronic recording by a private individual" of any oral communication, then said how he could have stayed clear of it: "The problem here could have been avoided if, at the outset of the traffic stop, the defendant had simply informed the police of his intention to tape record the encounter, or even held the tape recorder in plain sight. Had he done so, his recording would not have been secret," and so, the court went on, it would not have violated the statute.

For a phone line, the caller has to know, and has to know at the outset. A notice after the first question, or in the terms on a website, fails that test.

Where the state-by-state lists go wrong

Search this question and most results are state-by-state tables from AI phone vendors, with Massachusetts filed under "all-party consent". The label is shorthand for the "prior authority by all parties" route in B.4, and it pushes readers toward a consent ritual the statute does not ask for. One vendor's table, published in May 2026, says Massachusetts "requires meaningful assent". Another lists "Clear AI notification required". Neither phrase is in s. 99, which says nothing about assent, artificial intelligence or automated voices.

The error cuts both ways. A business that thinks it needs a spoken yes builds a press-one step into every call; one that thinks a line in its website terms is enough has missed the point of Hyde. What the statute and the cases ask for is knowledge, early, and proof of it.

Whether a caller should be told they are talking to software is a separate question that s. 99 does not answer. The agents on our Toronto lines already say it within seconds, and a Massachusetts greeting puts it right after the recording notice.

What the first ten seconds should say

This is how we write the opening of a Massachusetts line. It is our wording, a design we build to, and not a greeting running on a Boston line today:

"Thanks for calling [company name]. This call is recorded. You're speaking with our automated assistant, and you can ask for a person at any time. How can we help?"

The recording announcement is the second sentence. The rule is the one on our Boston page: the recording is announced in the first seconds, before anything else happens, the retention period is written down, and every captured detail has a home. In the build it comes down to four details.

• The notice plays in full. Some callers start talking over a greeting, so interruptions are switched off for that one sentence and the caller's voice cannot cut it short. Talking over a caller is one of the receptionist mistakes we graded on Toronto calls, and this is the one place we accept it.
• The notice is logged with the call. Each call record stores which version of the greeting played and when, so if a caller later says nobody told them, the record answers.
• Nothing is asked before the notice. The reason for the call, the unit and the callback number all come after it, because every second before the announcement is a second of recording the caller did not know about.
• A caller who objects gets another route. The agent gives the office's email or the hours a person answers, and the call ends.

Asking "do you consent to this recording?" is allowed. Section 99 does not require it, and on a maintenance line it puts one more step between a tenant and the report of a leak.

Callbacks, transfers and outbound calls

The announcement on the inbound greeting covers the caller on that call and nobody else.

A callback is a new conversation. When the agent calls a tenant back with a work order number, or calls a lead back about a showing, the person answering has heard nothing yet, so the first sentence after the hello repeats the notice. The same goes for a reminder call. Calls the line places also carry the federal rules on artificial voices, covered in our post on the TCPA and AI follow-up.

A warm transfer adds a party. When the agent bridges a caller to the on-call technician or a leasing agent, the person picking up is now on a recorded call too. In a Massachusetts build, staff who carry the on-call phone are told in writing that the line records, and a contractor or owner patched in hears the notice from the agent before the bridge opens.

When a recording becomes personal information

A second Massachusetts law reaches call recordings, and it is narrower than it sounds. Under M.G.L. c. 93H s. 1 and 201 CMR 17.02, "personal information" is a resident's first name or initial and last name together with a Social Security number, a driver's licence or state ID number, or a financial account or credit or debit card number that would permit access to the account. The regulation's definition of a record covers information that is "spoken" and "recorded or preserved", so an audio file is a record.

A recording of a tenant reporting a leak is not personal information under that definition. A recording of the same tenant giving their name and then reading out a card number is. From that moment the file sits under 201 CMR 17.03: a written information security program, and service providers chosen for their ability to protect the data and bound to it by contract (17.03(2)(f)). The AI vendor storing the recordings is one of those service providers.

The Toronto numbers show where that risk sits. The property management line we run took 2,142 calls between June 1 and September 10, 2026, and 336 of them, about one in six, were about payment (the triage post has the breakdown). Every call produces a report linked to its recording. Payment calls are where a caller is most likely to read out a card or account number, so a Massachusetts build handles them differently: the agent never asks for a card or account number, points the caller to the payment portal, cuts in if a caller starts reading one out, and the stored transcript masks any long run of digits. Section 17.03 sets no retention period, so the operator picks one and writes it down, and how long a record is kept is one of the questions we settle at design time, not after launch.

How this differs from the Toronto line

Our production voice agents run on two lines at one Toronto operation, a property management line and a brokerage line, and both answer to a different rule. Canada's Criminal Code s. 184(2)(a) takes an interception outside the offence with "the consent to intercept, express or implied" of the person who placed the call or the person it was meant for, so the business receiving the call can supply that consent itself. The US federal rule, 18 U.S.C. s. 2511(2)(d), works the same way for a party to the call or anyone with one party's prior consent, unless the purpose is criminal or tortious.

Massachusetts is stricter than both, because being a party to the call does not help when the test is whether anyone on it was recorded secretly. A system built for a Toronto line and moved to Boston unchanged would be built to the wrong rule. The greeting, the transfer and callback scripts and the payment handling all get rewritten before a Massachusetts line goes live, and they sit in the scope of any voice agent build we do from the first call.

What we checked

We read M.G.L. c. 272 s. 99 and c. 93H s. 1 on malegislature.gov, 18 U.S.C. s. 2511 on law.cornell.edu and the Criminal Code on the Justice Laws site (current to September 3, 2026), all on September 24, 2026. Mass.gov refused our requests for 201 CMR 17.00, so sections 17.02 and 17.03 come from Cornell's Legal Information Institute, and the Jackson and Hyde passages from CourtListener's copies of the opinions. This is an operator's reading, not legal advice, and it is the Massachusetts call recording law we would build a line to.

Frequently asked questions

Can an AI receptionist record calls in Massachusetts?

Yes, if every caller is told the call is recorded before the conversation starts. The wiretap act, M.G.L. c. 272 s. 99, makes it an offence to "secretly record" a call, and the Supreme Judicial Court has held that a recording the other person knows about is not secret. In practice that means a recording announcement in the greeting, before the first question.

Is Massachusetts a two-party consent state?

It is usually described that way, and the shorthand hides the test. The statute defines the offence as recording "secretly". A caller who has been clearly told the call is recorded is not recorded secretly, whether or not they said yes.

Does the Massachusetts wiretap act require the caller to agree to the recording announcement?

The statute does not require a spoken yes or a keypress. It requires that nobody be recorded secretly, and in Commonwealth v. Jackson the court looked for "clear and unequivocal objective manifestations of knowledge". A clear announcement at the start of the call, with a log showing it played, is the strongest evidence a business can keep, though no log proves what every caller heard.

What are the penalties for secretly recording a call in Massachusetts?

A fine of up to $10,000, prison of up to five years, or both, under s. 99 C.1. Each person recorded can also sue under s. 99 Q for actual damages of at least $1,000, or $100 for each day of violation if that is higher, plus punitive damages and legal fees.

Is a call recording personal information under 201 CMR 17.00?

Only when it holds a resident's name together with a Social Security number, a driver's licence or state ID number, or a financial account or card number. A maintenance recording with no such combination in it falls outside the definition. A recording where a caller gives their name and then reads out a card or account number that would open the account falls inside it, and then sits under the business's written information security program and its contract with the vendor holding the file.