Last updated 2026-07-09
TL;DR
Indiana is a one-party consent state under Indiana Code 35-33.5-1-5. One person on the call has to agree to the recording, and that person can be you. Federal TCPA rules and calls into other states can push you to two-party consent. Illegal recording in Indiana is a Level 6 felony with fines up to $10,000, and civil TCPA damages start at $500 per call.
What is the one-party consent rule in Indiana?
Indiana is a one-party consent state. Only one person on a call has to agree to the recording for it to be legal. If you are on the call, you are that person. You do not owe the other party a heads-up, and you do not need to ask.
The controlling statute is Indiana Code 35-33.5-1-5, which bars intercepting wire, oral, or electronic communications without the consent of at least one party [1]. The word "intercept" is defined in IC 35-31.5-2-176 as the aural acquisition of the contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication through an electronic, mechanical, or other device [1].
That reads like a mouthful. The plain meaning is short: record your own calls freely, but do not record a conversation you are not part of unless someone in it agrees.
One-party consent is the default across most of the country. Roughly 38 states follow it, and Indiana sits in that group [3]. The exceptions are where outbound teams get burned, especially teams calling into or out of Indiana all day.
Does Indiana require you to tell callers they are being recorded?
No. Indiana law does not require a recording announcement. Your own participation satisfies the one-party rule, so no disclosure is legally required under the state's wiretapping statutes.
There are still good reasons to announce it anyway.
- Federal rules for some industries (financial services, healthcare) may require disclosure on their own.
- The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule (16 CFR Part 310) carries disclosure and consent requirements for telemarketing calls [2].
- If a recording ever ends up in litigation, courts treat a clearly disclosed recording more kindly than a secret one.
- Some people will hang up once they hear a call is recorded, and a disclosure up front gives them that choice before you collect anything sensitive.
For most outbound teams, the clean move is a short recorded line at the very start of every call: "This call may be recorded for quality and compliance purposes." It costs about three seconds and kills the ambiguity. It is already standard practice. Do it.
What happens when you call someone in a two-party consent state from Indiana?
This is where Indiana's easy rule turns into a headache. Call from Indiana into California, Pennsylvania, or another all-party state, and the law of the state where the other party sits may control.
Courts have not fully settled which state's law governs an interstate call. The safer and more widely followed position is to apply the stricter standard when the parties are in different states [3].
Pennsylvania is the classic example. It requires all-party consent under the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act (18 Pa. C.S. § 5703). Record a call with a Pennsylvania resident without their consent and you can face criminal charges and civil liability in Pennsylvania, even though you dialed from Indiana [4]. Same logic for calls into Illinois, Maryland, Florida, Washington, and about a dozen other all-party states.
Here is the practical rule for outbound teams. If you do not know where your leads sit, or you have any real volume into all-party states, treat every call as if disclosure is required. A blanket "this call may be recorded" line at the start covers Indiana and the two-party states at the same time. It is the only version of this that scales.
Want the full state-by-state picture? The telephone call recording laws overview and the pa call recording laws guide pair well with this one.
How does federal TCPA law interact with Indiana recording rules?
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. § 227) does not say whether you can record a call [5]. It governs whether you can place the call at all, with what equipment, and with what consent. The two bodies of law meet inside your compliance workflow, not in the statute.
Make autodialed or prerecorded calls to Indiana numbers and you need prior express written consent under TCPA before the call goes out. Recording that same call is a separate question answered by Indiana's one-party rule. Both apply at once.
The FCC's 2015 TCPA Declaratory Ruling (FCC 15-72) read the definition of an automatic telephone dialing system broadly and held that reassigned numbers can create liability even when the caller had consent from the previous subscriber [6]. That hits Indiana callers exactly like it hits everyone else.
Here is the tangle. Prerecorded messages mean Indiana residents are getting calls that are already "recorded" in one sense. The prerecorded-content rules under TCPA are not the same as the wiretapping rules under Indiana Code, and your team has to track both. Miss either and it gets expensive fast. TCPA damages start at $500 per call and triple to $1,500 per call for willful violations [5]. The tcpa law guide breaks down how those penalties stack.
What are the penalties for illegal call recording in Indiana?
Illegal recording in Indiana is a felony, not a fine you shrug off. Under IC 35-33.5-4-1, unlawful interception is a Level 6 felony, which carries six months to two and a half years in prison and fines up to $10,000 [7].
On the civil side, IC 35-33.5-4-3 lets anyone whose communication was illegally intercepted sue for actual damages (a minimum of $100 per day of violation, not less than $1,000 total), plus punitive damages and attorney fees [7].
So this is not an administrative slap on the wrist. It is a felony with real prison time on the table. For a business, the civil suit is the more likely path, but criminal referrals happen when the conduct looks deliberate or systematic.
The chart below shows how Indiana's civil minimum stacks up against federal TCPA damages and the civil thresholds in several other states.
How does Indiana compare to other states on recording consent?
Indiana is on the easy end of the spectrum, but the states with the heaviest outbound volume are not. The table below maps Indiana against states your team is likely to dial. One-party states let you record your own calls without disclosure. All-party states require every participant to consent first.
| State | Consent required | Key statute | Civil minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indiana | One-party | IC 35-33.5-1-5 | $1,000 per violation |
| Texas | One-party | TX Penal Code § 16.02 | $10,000 per violation |
| New York | One-party | NY Penal Law § 250.00 | Actual damages + attorney fees |
| Georgia | One-party | GA Code § 16-11-62 | Actual damages |
| Arizona | One-party | ARS § 13-3005 | Actual damages |
| Pennsylvania | All-party | 18 Pa. C.S. § 5703 | $100/day, min $1,000 |
| Maryland | All-party | MD Courts § 10-402 | Actual damages |
| Illinois | All-party | 720 ILCS 5/14-2 | $10,000 per violation |
| California | All-party | CA Penal Code § 632 | $5,000 per violation |
| Florida | All-party | FL Stat. § 934.03 | $100/day, min $1,000 |
For details on the neighbors, see texas call recording laws, new york call recording law, georgia call recording law, arizona call recording laws, and maryland call recording laws.
Read the pattern. Indiana is friendly. California and Illinois, two of the biggest outbound markets in the country, are all-party. Run a national campaign out of Indiana and you are almost certainly calling into all-party states every single day.
Does Indiana law cover text messages and chat, or just phone calls?
Indiana's wiretapping statute covers wire, oral, and electronic communications [1]. Text messages and chat fall under "electronic communications" in most modern readings, though Indiana case law on this point is thinner than the case law on voice calls.
The layer that matters more for texting is federal. The TCPA covers SMS marketing directly, and the FCC has tightened consent requirements for texts across several rulings. Send marketing texts to Indiana numbers and you need prior express written consent under TCPA, no matter what the state recording statute says.
For how text rules sit on top of recording law, text message marketing facts covers the federal framework that stacks over any state rule.
What about business calls recorded for quality assurance, is that legal in Indiana?
Yes. Recording business calls for quality assurance, training, or compliance is legal in Indiana under the one-party rule. The business is a party to the call through its employee or agent, and that participation satisfies the requirement.
Plenty of businesses add a disclosure anyway, both to set caller expectations and to satisfy their own regulators. Financial services firms under FINRA, for example, have record-keeping duties under FINRA Rule 4511 that reach well past anything Indiana law requires [8]. Healthcare callers carry HIPAA questions that touch recording practices.
If your recordings contain protected health information, HIPAA's minimum necessary standard and your business associate agreements matter more day to day than the state wiretapping statute. Both apply at once.
Building a clean program across recording, consent documentation, and DNC scrubbing? The LeadCompliant compliance kit walks the checklist in a single reference doc. It is free and worth having before a regulator asks the first question.
How does recording consent work for group or conference calls in Indiana?
One-party consent covers group calls in Indiana the same way it covers a two-person call. If you are on the conference line, your presence satisfies the requirement, and you can record without telling the others.
Geography is where it gets hard. Put participants in California, Illinois, and Indiana on the same bridge and you now have all-party state residents on the line. The stricter standard from those states may reach the whole call, not only the legs those people are on.
The safe practice for multi-state group calls is one line at the top: "This call is being recorded." That is it. Anyone who objects can say so or drop off. It satisfies all-party states without collecting individual written consent from every participant.
For a parallel analysis in another one-party state, georgia recording consent law group audio call is worth a read.
What about international calls, does Australian or other foreign recording law affect Indiana-based callers?
Call from Indiana to Australia and Australian law may apply to the portion of the call received there. Australia's Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Cth) prohibits intercepting communications passing over a telecommunications system, with limited exceptions [9]. Australia is effectively an all-party jurisdiction for private calls, though the enforcement reach against a U.S. company sitting in Indiana is limited in practice.
For most small and mid-sized outbound teams, foreign recording law is a theoretical risk, not an active threat. The practical advice holds: if you sell into Australia, disclose recording at the start of every call. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) does have jurisdiction over spam and telemarketing that touches Australian recipients, and the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 (Cth) adds another layer for consumer calls [10].
The universal rule, whether you call within Indiana, into a two-party U.S. state, or overseas: disclose that you are recording. It costs nothing and removes most of your risk.
What practical steps should Indiana-based sales and compliance teams take right now?
Here is what I would actually do to set up a compliant recording program for an Indiana outbound team.
First, add a recorded disclosure to every outbound call, at the very start, before any selling. Your dialer can play it automatically. Use something like: "This call may be monitored or recorded for quality and compliance purposes." That one line handles Indiana, every two-party state, and most international worry at once.
Second, map your lead lists by state before you dial. Know what share of your volume lands in all-party states. California, Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Connecticut, Oregon, and New Hampshire all require all-party or two-party consent [3]. With real volume there, the disclosure script is not optional.
Third, keep written consent documentation for every TCPA-covered call. Recording consent and TCPA consent are separate issues, but they show up together the moment a plaintiff or regulator starts pulling your call records. Having both clean beats having one and scrambling for the other.
Fourth, store recordings securely with a set retention schedule. Indiana law does not name a retention period, but FINRA requires six years for registered firms [8], and any business should keep recordings long enough to defend a complaint. A reasonable floor is 12 to 24 months.
The LeadCompliant free call recording compliance checklist covers every step here in a printable format you can hand to your team or your dialer vendor.
Still unsure about your specific setup? is it against the law to record phone calls walks the federal and state analysis together, and recorded phone call laws covers the full national picture.
Frequently asked questions
Is Indiana a one-party or two-party consent state for recording phone calls?
Indiana is a one-party consent state. Under Indiana Code 35-33.5-1-5, only one party to a communication must consent to a recording, and that party can be the person doing the recording. You do not need to inform the other caller or get their permission as long as you are a participant in the call.
Can I record a phone call in Indiana without telling the other person?
Yes, legally. Indiana's one-party consent rule does not require you to disclose that you are recording. But if the person you called sits in a two-party state like California or Pennsylvania, their state's law may require disclosure. The safest practice for any outbound team is to announce recording at the start of every call regardless.
What is the penalty for illegally recording a phone call in Indiana?
Unlawful interception is a Level 6 felony under IC 35-33.5-4-1, carrying six months to two and a half years in prison and fines up to $10,000. Civil liability under IC 35-33.5-4-3 lets the affected party recover actual damages with a statutory minimum of $1,000, plus punitive damages and attorney fees.
Does Indiana's recording law apply to text messages?
Indiana's wiretapping statute covers electronic communications, which courts generally read to include text messages and chat. In practice, federal TCPA rules govern most business text compliance, requiring prior express written consent before sending marketing SMS to any number regardless of state. Both layers apply at the same time.
What happens if I record a call with someone in California while I am in Indiana?
California requires all-party consent under Penal Code § 632. On an interstate call, courts generally apply the stricter standard. Recording a California resident without their consent could expose you to California criminal and civil liability even if you are physically in Indiana. The safe answer is to disclose recording before the call begins.
Does the federal TCPA affect call recording rules in Indiana?
Not directly. The TCPA (47 U.S.C. § 227) governs whether and how you can contact someone, not whether you can record the call. Indiana's state wiretapping law controls recording consent. Both laws apply to the same call, so an outbound team has to meet TCPA dialing rules and Indiana recording rules at the same time.
Can my business record quality assurance calls with Indiana customers without telling them?
Yes, under Indiana's one-party consent rule. Your business, through its employee or agent on the call, is a party to the communication, and that participation satisfies the requirement. Many businesses add a disclosure anyway for professionalism and to satisfy industry rules like FINRA Rule 4511 for financial services firms.
How long must I keep recorded calls under Indiana law?
Indiana's wiretapping statute sets no retention period for legally made recordings. Your retention window is driven by industry rules (FINRA requires six years for registered firms), your own litigation risk, and any contract obligations. A reasonable baseline for most businesses is 12 to 24 months, long enough to answer a complaint or audit.
Does Indiana recording law apply to Zoom, Teams, or other video calls?
Indiana's statute covers electronic communications broadly, which includes VoIP calls and video conferencing. The one-party rule applies: if you are a participant, your presence satisfies it. For interstate or international video calls with participants in all-party states or countries, the stricter standard may reach the whole call.
What is the difference between Indiana's recording law and Pennsylvania's recording law?
Indiana requires only one-party consent under IC 35-33.5-1-5. Pennsylvania requires all-party consent under 18 Pa. C.S. § 5703, meaning every participant must consent before a recording is made. If your Indiana team calls Pennsylvania residents, Pennsylvania's stricter rule may govern the call. Disclosing recording at the start satisfies both states.
Does Australia have a call recording law that affects Indiana-based callers?
Australia's Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 prohibits intercepting communications without authorization, making Australia effectively an all-party jurisdiction. Enforcement against a small U.S. business is limited in practice, but calls to Australian consumers also trigger the Australian Do Not Call Register Act 2006. Disclosing recording at the start of every international call is the practical fix.
If I use a prerecorded message for outbound calls in Indiana, what consent do I need?
Prerecorded messages to Indiana cell phones require prior express written consent under the federal TCPA. Indiana's one-party wiretapping rule does not add a hurdle for the recording itself, but the TCPA consent requirement is strict and documented consent is mandatory. Miss it and you face $500 to $1,500 per call in federal statutory damages.
Can an employee in Indiana record a call with their employer without the employer's knowledge?
Yes, legally. Under Indiana's one-party consent rule, the employee is a party to the call and can record it without the employer's knowledge or consent. Whether that breaks an employment contract or company policy is a separate question, but Indiana criminal wiretapping law does not prohibit it.
Sources
- Indiana General Assembly, IC 35-33.5 (Indiana Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance): Indiana requires only one-party consent for recording; unlawful interception defined under IC 35-31.5-2-176 and IC 35-33.5-1-5
- Federal Trade Commission, Telemarketing Sales Rule (16 CFR Part 310): FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule imposes disclosure and consent requirements on telemarketing calls
- National Conference of State Legislatures, Recording Phone Calls and Conversations: Approximately 38 states follow one-party consent; California, Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland and others require all-party consent
- Pennsylvania General Assembly, 18 Pa. C.S. § 5703 (Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act): Pennsylvania requires all-party consent for recording phone calls under 18 Pa. C.S. § 5703
- U.S. Government Publishing Office, 47 U.S.C. § 227 (Telephone Consumer Protection Act): TCPA statutory damages are $500 per violation, trebled to $1,500 for willful violations; TCPA does not directly govern recording consent
- Indiana General Assembly, IC 35-33.5-4 (Civil and Criminal Remedies for Unlawful Interception): Unlawful interception is a Level 6 felony with up to $10,000 fine; civil minimum $1,000 plus punitive damages and attorney fees under IC 35-33.5-4-1 and 35-33.5-4-3
- FINRA, Rule 4511 (General Requirements for Books and Records): FINRA Rule 4511 requires registered firms to preserve records including call recordings for six years
- Australian Government, Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979: Australia prohibits interception of communications over telecommunications systems without authorization, making it effectively an all-party consent jurisdiction
- Texas Legislature, TX Penal Code § 16.02 (Unlawful Interception, Use, or Disclosure of Wire, Oral, or Electronic Communications): Texas is a one-party consent state with civil minimum of $10,000 per violation under TX Penal Code § 16.02
- Maryland General Assembly, MD Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 10-402 (Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance): Maryland requires all-party consent for recording phone calls under MD Courts § 10-402