Voice phishing simulations in Hungary
Hungary asks for more in writing than anywhere else in this portal and punishes one pretext harder than anywhere else. The reasoning behind a voice phishing simulation is handed to your workforce rather than filed for a regulator, and impersonating an official proceeding moves the relevant offence into a higher sentencing bracket. Numbers are supplied, but a campaign dialled from outside Hungary will not connect at all.
Phone numbers
Supplied by Callstrike
Local numbers in Hungary, after a one-time approval.
Running a simulation
Permitted, and the pretext is the risk
Posing as a public authority is a different sentencing bracket, not a worse look.
Consent
Written reasoning, handed over
Staff are entitled to read why the exercise is necessary and proportionate, in advance.
Getting a phone number in Hungary
One approval per country, completed in the console.
Provisioned by Callstrike after approval
Numbers here are not released from open inventory. Your workspace is cleared for this country once, and Callstrike then provisions a dedicated number against it for your simulations. Approval is a one-time, per-country step and usually takes 3 to 5 business days. We only ask for what the regulator requires.
Two documents carry the Hungarian filing and one of them has a shelf life. An excerpt from the commercial register proves the business identity, and a utility bill, a tax notice, a rent receipt or a title deed proves the local address. The address document must be dated within the last three months, so a copy pulled for an earlier filing will not do, and the address itself has to sit inside the locality or region the number's own prefix covers, with a post office box not accepted where a local address is required. The console form also takes your business website and the authorised representative's phone number and email alongside their name, typed rather than evidenced.
Then the rule that decides deliverability before any legal question arises, and it is blunt. Hungarian providers must examine a call arriving from an international direction before routing it, and a call presenting a non-mobile Hungarian number is classified as abusive on the identifier alone, in terms, without regard to the other circumstances of the call and in particular without regard to the content of the communication. Mobile numbers are blocked too unless the number is genuinely roaming. Geographic and short numbers have been inside the regime since October 2025 and mobile since June 2026. Nothing you can put in a file reaches a rule that is deliberately content-blind, so Hungarian traffic originates in Hungary or it does not arrive.
- 01Complete the regulatory clearance formYour administrator, in the Callstrike console. The form asks only for what the regulator requires.
- 02Approval is granted against your workspaceTypically three to five business days, and once only for as long as you operate here.
- 03A dedicated number in Hungary is assigned to youCallstrike
- 04Build and launch the campaignYour team
| What you provide | Accepted evidence, any one of |
|---|---|
| Proof of business identity | Excerpt from the commercial register |
| Proof of local addressMust be within locality or region covered by the phone number's prefix; a PO Box is not acceptable where a local address is required. Address document must be dated in the last 3 months. | Utility bill, Tax notice, Rent receipt, Title deed |
These requirements are set by the carrier and can change. The form in the console is generated from their current rules, so treat it as authoritative and this table as a summary of what to have ready. Checked 2026-09-07.
Is it lawful to run a simulation in Hungary?
The position in short, before your counsel reads the detail below.
Yes, with one qualification we are not going to paper over. The Hungarian automated calling rule lives in the electronic communications act rather than in the advertising act, and it gates the use of an automated calling system on three purposes: direct marketing, information, and market research. Two of those plainly do not describe an internal security test. The third is the problem, because the word translated as information means, in ordinary Hungarian, informing; the act does not define it; and a call that tests and then teaches arguably informs. Suppliers commonly tell buyers the rule is scoped to marketing and an internal test therefore sits outside it. That claims more than the text supports, and we searched the regulator's material for a position on the point and found none.
What follows if the limb does reach you is worth designing for either way, because it points the same direction as everything else on this page: the same section provides that even with express consent, no communication for those purposes may be transmitted from which the sender's identifying data cannot be recognised. A concealed or unattributable calling identity is directly hostile to that requirement, so an attributable number is the safe design under both readings.
The sharpest Hungarian provision is criminal and it is about the pretext rather than the data. Illicit data acquisition is committed by a person who, for the purpose of the unauthorised acquisition of personal data or a private, economic or business secret, secretly spies out the content of a communication conducted over an electronic communications network and records what is perceived by technical means. The base offence carries up to three years. It rises to one to five years where the acquisition is committed by simulating an official proceeding, and a pretext impersonating the tax authority, the police or a regulator is precisely that. Nowhere else in our coverage is an aggravating circumstance drawn this closely around the shape of a pretext call, so a Hungarian scenario library should be written with the provision open. Whether a party to the call is inside the base offence at all is genuinely unsettled, and we leave it that way: a neighbouring offence in the same code reaches a person who spies out a communication transmitted to another, and this one contains no such word.
The civil code is the sharper constraint in practice and the easiest to miss. The right to one's voice recording is a named personality right, and the person's agreement is required both for the making of a recording and for the use of the one made. Those are two separate agreements, and the only exceptions are crowd recordings and recordings of public appearances in public life, neither of which describes a workplace telephone call. The regulator hardened its tone on covert audio in a December 2024 communiqué addressed to what it called a spreading unlawful practice. The practical reading is to design the exercise so it does not depend on retaining audio at all. Separately, and unlike several of its neighbours, Hungary has actually built the machinery for the European transparency duty: a 2025 implementing act is in force and a government decree designates a market surveillance authority with power to fine.
What your company needs to do
7 items, in the order you will need them.
- Write the pretext library with the aggravator openHungary-specificKeep public authorities out of your scenarios. A pretext posing as the tax authority, the police or a regulator sits squarely in the aggravating circumstance that moves illicit data acquisition from up to three years to one to five. This is a scenario-design decision rather than a paperwork one, and it costs nothing to make correctly at the start.
- Hand over the reasoning, not just the noticeHungary-specificIn advance and in writing, your workforce is entitled to the manner, the conditions and the expected duration of the restriction, and the circumstances substantiating its necessity and proportionality. Most countries want you to hold a balancing assessment. Hungary wants the reasoning given to the people it is about, before the restriction begins.
- Ask the works council at least fifteen days before you decideHungary-specificThe statute names the application of a technical device serving the monitoring of employees in its own list, so there is no interpretive step to take. It is an opinion rather than an agreement, and the joint decision right covers welfare funds only. But fifteen days before the decision, not before the campaign, is a hard sequencing constraint that has to be in the plan from the start.
- Originate the calls inside HungaryHungary-specificThe border filter is content-blind by design and says so in terms, so no authorisation letter or internal-test framing reaches it. A campaign dialled from a platform outside Hungary presenting a Hungarian number is blocked before anyone hears it ring. Confirm where your traffic originates before you plan anything else about delivery.
- Design so the programme does not depend on keeping audioHungary-specificThe making of a voice recording and the use of the recording made each need the person's agreement, and that agreement is hard to obtain validly in an employment relationship. An exercise that records outcomes rather than conversations never has to answer the question, and the regulator's recent communiqué on covert audio is a reason to settle it early.
- Do not rely on a blanket clause in the contract of employmentA personality right may not be waived in advance in a general manner, and a declaration disposing of one is valid only in writing. Whatever your standard contract says about monitoring, the specific advance document described above is what actually does the work here.
- Keep the credential out of the systemMeasure the behaviour and discard what the pretext asked for. It also removes an element of the criminal provision rather than merely mitigating it, which is explained in the controls below.
The controls that do the work
How Callstrike is configured, and which provision in Hungary each choice answers.
Auto-hangup before disclosure
The bot ends the call at the moment an employee starts to give up a credential or a piece of personal data, so the thing the pretext asked for is never spoken into the system and never stored.
Read the Hungarian offence as a list of elements rather than as a description, and this control removes one of them. Illicit data acquisition needs the purpose of unauthorised acquisition, the secret spying out of the communication, and the recording of what is perceived by technical means. The call ends the moment an employee starts to give up a credential, and the exercise keeps an outcome rather than a capture, so the acquisition the provision describes does not happen and there is nothing recorded for the third limb to attach to. It answers the civil code the same way, because what is never captured is not a recording anybody has to agree to.
In-call debrief and follow-up
A second voice breaks character as soon as the call ends, explains what just happened and why it worked, and a follow-up email repeats it in writing while the moment is still sharp.
The labour code standard is that a restriction on a personality right must be absolutely necessary for a reason directly connected with the employment relationship and proportionate to the objective, and you have to write out the circumstances substantiating both. A second voice that breaks character the moment the call ends, with vishing training in writing the same day, is a concrete proportionality fact you can put into that document rather than an intention you assert in it.
Consent Management
Two modes: collect consent now, over email, Slack or Teams with a full audit trail per employee; or record that your organisation already has this covered, by uploading the policy, handbook clause or agreement and confirming the scope it applies to. The document is hashed, the attestation is signed and timestamped, and an audit email is issued. Included on every plan.
The Hungarian regulator's position is that the voluntariness of an employee's agreement cannot be construed, because refusing may cause material or non-material detriment in a subordinate relationship, so it is available only exceptionally. That settles what this is not. What it produces is the advance written document the labour code demands, dated before the restriction begins, and a hashed copy of the policy or internal rule you rely on with a signed and timestamped attestation of the scope it covers, which is the form a general advance waiver could never take.
SCORM module
An interactive web presentation on voice-phishing risk, delivered through your own LMS, which then invites the learner to opt into a web call with the bot. A call the person starts themselves in a browser is not a telephone call, so telephony rules do not reach it.
In Hungary this answers the delivery problem and the purpose gate at the same time. Callstrike's vishing simulator can deliver the same deepfake voice through a web call the learner starts themselves after working through the module. The communications act provision is written about an automated calling system or another automated device for establishing a subscriber connection, and a browser session establishes no subscriber connection, so the unclosable third purpose never has to be argued. The border filter has no Hungarian calling identifier to examine either. The European transparency duty is unaffected, which is why the module names the synthetic voice on its own face.
Consent Management is included on every plan. See AI voice phishing simulation and human-in-the-loop voice phishing for how each is delivered.