[masraum]

I'm a network engineer. Any VoIP based system can be recorded and listened to at a later date. Even if you set up your own VoIP, it could be recorded and played back by your service provider or any network that it passes through.

Pretty much every Cisco router or switch (the parts that make the Internet or any network) includes a provision for copying the network traffic that goes through them off to another location to be stored. Once that stored information is saved and collected which can be done on any laptop or computer with free software that pretty much every network engineer has, if that traffic contains a voice call, the same software can play the traffic back (https://wiki.wireshark.org/VoIP_calls).

If a VoIP provider is recording your calls, I suspect they aren't hanging onto those calls for more than a few days, maybe a week, and very unlikely that it's more than a month. They may have equipment that is basically a server full of hard drives. That server just records everything going through it. When the hard drives are full, it starts deleting the oldest info and saving the new incoming info. There are also network monitoring tools that look at every call, and can record them (usually keep them for no more than a day or two) and work out the math to determine the call quality. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the VoIP provider told you "we listened to the calls" rather than try to explain to you that they have software that tells them what the quality was. It probably wouldn't be policy for them to tell you that, but could be a tactic that a support person came up with. It would also not be surprising for the guy that sold you the system to have no idea.

I've not worked at a Voice/telco recently, but my guess is that they can do the same thing fairly easily, but no idea if they do as a matter of course or if they turn it on when needed.