2024-02-07 07:14:20
The National Data Protection and Freedom of Information Authority (NAIH) closed the investigation it launched into the case of SMS dumping prior to the 2022 parliamentary elections with a statement at the end of January 2024: the report, which was prepared for nearly two years, does not in any way refer to the Datadat companies as to perpetrators – writes Datadat in its statement on Wednesday.
According to the company’s wording, “this report concludes the false propaganda campaign that the Hungarian state party has conducted against the companies and owners of Datadat for the past two years. The falsely accused company is continuing its defamation lawsuits against the propaganda papers involved.”
Datadat Professional Kft. made a public interest announcement on December 23, 2022 regarding the mass, named “sms sending scandal” that erupted at the end of March 2022. As is well known, just before the 2022 parliamentary elections, the National Election Commission (NVB) appealed to the authorities regarding the opposition’s sms dumping. Then István Hollik, the communications director of Fidesz, said in a video statement that they had received several reports that text messages had been sent from an unknown phone number, in which they encouraged support for the left. Such messages were also received by people who had never provided any data to left-wing parties, including several members of the government. That’s exactly what he said
in recent days, a lot of information has come to light that Gordon the champion and what kind of secret and illegal phishing activities his American-trained Secret Service conducted through a company called DatAdat.
Datadat denied the accusations even then, according to their statement, “the Fidesz media companies (…) started a systematic discrediting campaign against the Datadat group of companies.” All of this seriously harms the business interests of the Datadat group of companies, which is why they are taking legal action, they wrote at the time. Among these legal steps was the company’s appeal to the NAIH, requesting that the authority “finally conduct a substantive investigation into the matter and expose the real perpetrators who provoked the scandal.”
This investigation has now been concluded, according to the company’s latest statement. As they write, in recent weeks the NAIH has presented a number of investigation reports (telephone campaigns, Facebook Messenger campaigns, e-mails) concerning the 2022 parliamentary campaign. The common feature of these is that no violation of the law has been established in any form regarding the data management practices of the Datadat companies. And now this is also the case of the famous SMS campaign.
The new NAIH report confirms: “for years, the Fidesz propaganda press falsely claimed that:
- Datadat engages in phishing activities;
- Datadat helps the opposition’s campaign with fake profiles and paid comments;
- Datadat built an illegal database of 1 million voters;
- he sent them text messages before the elections;
- and that all this is supported by official reports.
They remind: before the 2022 parliamentary elections, a mass SMS campaign was sent to Hungarian voters from an unknown source. “The Fidesz propaganda press immediately suspected the Datadat companies, citing evidence and official information. The company initiated legal proceedings in all such cases, most of which are still ongoing. In recent years, Datadat and its owners have already won a lawsuit against Origo, Index and at least 18 other propaganda products in the SMS campaign defamation case,” the announcement concludes.
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