Recording and consent
Recording a session in Singapore.
Singapore has no general ban on a participant recording a conversation, and the Personal Data Protection Act is what sets the obligations that follow. That is the Personal Data Protection Act 2012, and the sentence a practitioner says out loud before recording is the same one in every country on this site.
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
01The sentence
Say this, out loud, before anything else is said.
I am going to record this session so I can write you a proper report afterwards. Is that all right with you?
It is the same sentence everywhere, because a specific disclosure followed by a direct question is what recording guidance favours over a vague notice, and because everybody in the session agreeing is safe in every jurisdiction on this site. What changes by place is who has to answer it.
02Who has to agree
In Singapore the rule is one party, with a data law on top.
The statute the Personal Data Protection Act 2012
There is no Singaporean statute making it an offence for a person in a conversation to record it. The Personal Data Protection Act is the instrument that matters, and it is built around three obligations that land directly on a session recording: notification, which means telling the person the purpose before or at the time of collection; consent, which has to be for that stated purpose; and purpose limitation, which means the recording may not later be used for something the person was not told about. The Commission has published advisory guidelines on exactly this.
Notification before or at the time of collection is the Act's own phrase and it is what the permission sentence does. Name the purpose in the same breath as the question, which is what writing you a proper report afterwards is doing in that sentence.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
The Personal Data Protection Commission's guidance is that a minor under 13 cannot give valid consent and a parent or guardian has to, and that a young person of 13 or above may generally consent where they understand the consequences. For a paid session that produces a report a parent will read, ask the parent whatever the age, because the report itself is a disclosure to a third party that the student should know about.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the Personal Data Protection Act 2012.
The Act added a mandatory data breach notification regime in 2021 and a duty to appoint a data protection officer, which applies to an organisation of any size including a sole practitioner. Financial penalties are calculated against Singapore turnover. The retention limitation obligation is the one a practitioner should design around: personal data has to be destroyed once the purpose it was collected for has ended.
05What Slide Practice does
The audio goes as soon as the report is written.
At upload the practitioner confirms on screen that everyone in the session agreed. That confirmation is stored, and the footer of the report prints the date it was given.
Session audio is deleted as soon as the write-up is made. The The text of what was said, written out from the recording. stays with the The written page a client receives after a session: what was covered, what went well, what they agreed to do, and what is next., on the client's own page, and both are kept until the account is closed. Closing an account starts a 30 day window, at the end of which everything is deleted rather than archived.
Nothing is drafted from a recording until the practitioner has confirmed that everyone agreed, and nothing reaches a client until a person has read it. The whole of what is kept, and for how long, is on the security page and in the privacy policy.
06Where this came from
Two primary sources, and neither of them is us.
- Personal Data Protection Act 2012, Singapore Statutes Online
- Advisory guidelines on the PDPA, Personal Data Protection Commission
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
Nearby
- Recording a session in the Philippines
- Recording a session in India
- Every jurisdiction, and how permission works in the product
- What the report itself looks like, practice by practice
Bring one recording you already have permission for, and read what comes back. No account and no card.