If you are recording or transcribing real time exchanges of communications, like in a chat or text messages, and keep transcripts of the chats without permission, you may be in violation of your state’s wiretap statutes.

That is especially true if you then allow third-party vendors to listen in or review.

A number of new class actions cases are popping up in California, using the California Invasion of Privacy Act. Privacy advocates are serving as “testers.”

While this wave of lawsuits started in California, this could be equally applicable to other states’ wiretapping laws. Beware.