DatAdat investigation continues

Authorities are still investigating the SMS hurricane that bombarded a tenth of the country’s population with brief, personalized text messages. The DatAdat group – founded in part by former Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai of the Socalist MSZP party – is behind the affair. Attila Péterfalvi, President of the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (NAIH), told Magyar Nemzet that OSCE observers in Hungary were notified of the worrying case of compromised data.

London, 2013. március 11. Bajnai Gordon volt miniszterelnök, az Együtt 2014 társalapítója, az egyesület elnöke a Haza és Haladás Egyesület fórumbeszélgetésén Londonban 2013. március 11-én. MTI Fotó: Kollányi Péter Fotó: Kollányi Péter

“We have received several submissions and the investigation and identification process is still underway,” said Attila Péterfalvi, the President of the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (NAIH). He added that the case can most likely be attributed to the political opposition.

He explained that the phone numbers were not attained from a telephone network database, but rather, people’s offline and online interactions were linked using three different software.

“That is why many individuals received text messages citing their nickname or Facebook username,” highlighted Péterfalvi. He believes that,this could be considered a violation of rights and the OSCE observers who came to monitor the Hungarian elections have been informed of this.This is potentially the largest and most widespread case of election fraud by the left since the regime change, affecting around one million people. Based on the joint investigation so far by service providers and the authorities, it was revealed that the SMS hurricane was ordered by the Austrian subsidiary of the DatAdat group which was founded in part by former socialist PM of Hungary Gordon Bajnai and his Former Minister of Civilian Intelligence Services, Ádám Ficsor. The company also provided the necessary for this operation.The company has an offshore background and the data collected for the left-wing campaign may be managed in Estonia which is famous for not monitoring compliance with EU GDPR standards too strictly.The illegally obtained data consists of names downloaded from Facebook profiles linked to phone numbers, as well as contact information accessed from banking and commercial information. This explains why the perpetrators sent text messages in every direction without any targeting based on political affiliation. That is why many right-wing sympathizers, conservative public figures, and even government officials received short, personalized messages.

The aim of the DatAdat efforts was to deter those from voting who would surely side with the governing party through these personalized messages – while motivating those to vote who would prefer the left. Therefore, Bajnai and his circle mainly targeted undecided voters through AI and chatbots. Chatbots gather data in disguised ways – for instance with quizzes or other question-answer games. With those answers and tracking other online activities, DatAdat and other companies like it can diagnose the political preferences of Facebook users.On the Facebook page of Péter Márki-Zay, the left’s failed PM candidate, similar materials were posted: users who filled out opinion quizzes were then subscribed to his newsletter and received Facebook Messenger messages from him.But the DatAdat group did not stop at waves of SMS messages that flooded users – on the Thursday before elections, they launched a massive phone campaign, calling approximately one million voters.

Photo: Gordon Bajnai (Photo: MTI/Kollányi Péter)