The BayLDA or Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision, has launched an investigation into Worldcoin’s human identity verification project on the basis of worries over biometric data
On July 31, the German data authority began looking into Worldcoin’s operations in November 2022. Worldcoin, a project that aimed to discriminate between real individuals and bots by offering retinal scans for identity verification had more than 2 million sign-ups, prior to the introduction of its token in July.
BayLDA allegedly gave careful attention to this retinal scan data. According to reports, President Michael Will stated that there was a risk for Worldcoin users because the technologies were neither “established nor well analysed” for use in exchanging financial information.
In addition to the BayLDA’s alleged inquiries, the French National Commission on Informatics and Liberty has apparently labelled Worldcoin’s data gathering practices “questionable.”
Similar worries about the project were raised by the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK. Despite having a subsidiary in Germany, Tools for Humanity, the organisation that created Worldcoin, has been receiving interest from users all across the world.
Worldcoin co-founder Sam Altman has claimed that a new person is “getting verified every 8 seconds” using iris scans all across the world.
Notably, numerous cryptocurrency users have highlighted possible advantages of the initiative, such as compensating those impacted by the collapses of Three Arrows Capital and FTX.
Important players, such as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Block CEO Jack Dorsey, have already remarked on the idea.