Automatically Requesting Recording Consent

Rather than taking a few minutes out of your meeting time to ask for permission to record the call, Fathom sends an email notification to your attendees before your scheduled event.

It's generally best practice to obtain consent before you record a call. In some jurisdictions, recording without permission can even be illegal.

We recommend consulting with a lawyer to understand related laws in the jurisdictions in which you operate.

Fathom offers a few ways to let your attendees know they're being recorded — and how these work depends on whether you're on the previous (bot-based) experience or the new bot-free experience.

If your attendee has requested in advance not to be recorded, we disable auto-record and mark this call with the yellow ⚠️ warning icon . On these calls, we recommend you do not let in your notetaker unless you obtain verbal consent from the other party.

The bot-free experience also introduces Recording Notice — a new way to let participants know they're being recorded, built directly into the desktop app. You can learn more here!

New bot-free version:

• The meeting is external (includes at least one attendee from outside your domain)

• The meeting is a scheduled calendar event (not an impromptu/unscheduled call)

• "Auto Request Recording Consent" is enabled in your settings

• You have host privileges on the meeting (see platform-specific notes below)

Platform notes:

• Google Meet and Microsoft Teams: Consent emails can still be sent even if you are not the meeting host or calendar invite creator, as long as you are attending the scheduled external meeting.

• Zoom: Consent emails only go out if you have host privileges on the Zoom meeting. If an external attendee created the Zoom meeting and invited you, you won't have host privileges and no consent email will be sent.

Consent emails are sent regardless of which capture mode you have selected (Transcript Only, Audio Only, or Audio + Video).

If multiple people from your organization are attending the same meeting, external attendees may currently receive more than one consent email. Deduplication is in progress and will be resolved in a future update.

Classic (bot-based) users (previous version):

Consent emails are sent when all of the following are true:

• The meeting is external (not internal)

• The Fathom user is the host of the meeting

• The call start time is midnight or later in the host's time zone

• Consent is enabled on the Settings page

• The number of guest attendees is exactly 1

Timing

Fathom sends consent emails 24 hours before the meeting starts. If you schedule a meeting less than 24 hours out but on the next calendar day, the email goes out immediately.

Fathom does not send consent emails for same-day meetings.

Note: The same-day restriction applies to both experiences. Impromptu and unscheduled meetings (such as Slack Huddles) do not trigger consent emails.

If any attendee selects ‘No, I'd prefer not to be recorded,’ auto-record will be disabled for that meeting. However, recording is not permanently blocked — the host can still request verbal consent during the meeting and manually start capture if permission is granted.

The desktop app drawer will also have a warning icon:

If the client selects "YES, I consent to being recorded" then the drawer will have a green toggle:

1. Go to the Settings page

2. Scroll down to the Options section

3. Toggle on "Auto Request Recording Consent"

• Admins can set "Auto Request Recording Consent" to "Enabled for all" in Organization Settings to apply this to the whole team.

We suggest defaulting to over-sharing that the call is being recorded to ensure that everyone involved has provided consent.

There are multiple ways to achieve this:

• Stating at the beginning of a call that it's being recorded, to ensure that there are no objections.

• Enabling consent requests, outlined above.

• If utilizing Zoom:

  • Zoom will display a banner stating that the meeting is being recorded.

  • Zoom will also audibly state "recording in progress" unless this setting is deactivated (which we do not recommend):

    

• Attendees will see that there is a Fathom AI Notetaker on the call. You can update the name of your notetaker to make it clear that the bot is recording the conversation.

If we don’t receive a response to the consent email, the Fathom bot will still join and record the call as normal. Attendees can always choose to remove the bot from the meeting at any time.

If an attendee declines consent, Fathom disables auto-record for the meeting as a safeguard. However, the meeting host can still manually start recording later if consent is obtained directly during the call.

If an attendee raises a concern about a recording:

• The meeting host is the data controller, so the attendee will need to contact the recording owner to request deletion. This is in line with our Terms of Service + Privacy Policy.

Note: It is the recording owner’s responsibility to make sure all participants have given consent to be recorded.