Debreceni Egyetem – Complaint Upheld (Hungary, 2020)

On 14th April 2020 the lecturers of the University of Debrecen complained to MarkMyProfessor, a website where users may publish opinions about professors. According to them, one of the users since mid-November had systematically published "assessments" consisting solely of obscene words. However, MarkMyProfessor did not reply to the requests. As a result, the Dean of the University of Debrecen lodged a complaint before the Hungarian DPA. May a lack of immediate response to a data subject's request be justified by a letter being wrongly addressed? During the investigation, the DPA concluded that the request sent to MarkMyProfessor was sent not to its office, but to its registered office address. Because of the first wave of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic it was difficult for the controller to find out about it and give a meaningful response to it in a timely manner. The DPA warned MarkMyProfessor and decided not to impose a fine, taking into account as mitigating circumstances that the infringement was a result of negligence and that the controller quickly reacted to the order of clarification by deleting personal data in question and introducing new profile settings to avoid future infringements.