Worldcoin will continue without scanning the irises of the Spanish. The cryptocurrency company owned by Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpeAI, has made a legally binding commitment not to resume its activity in Spain until the end of the year or until the Bavarian data protection authority (BayLDA), where The company through which it operates is located in Europe, determine whether its practices are legal.
The announcement comes a few days before the three-month suspension of activity imposed by the precautionary measures ordered by the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) expires. In March, the agency prohibited Tools for Humanity, the company that is collecting and storing high-definition images of the irises of Worldcoin users, from continuing to scan the irises of its users, which the company calls “proof of humanity” and uses to associate each cryptocurrency account with a specific user.
The president of Tools for Humanity, Michael Will, communicated his decision to the AEPD on May 28. The letter, to which EL PAÍS has had access, offers full collaboration with the Agency and its Bavarian counterpart, BayLDA. “We hereby declare in a legally binding manner for you (referring to Mar España, Director of the AEPD) and for the BayLDA that we will not collect or otherwise process any personal data through any Orb registry in Spain until end of the calendar year 2024, or if earlier, until there is a final decision (…). Please note that this statement constitutes a legally binding offer,” he notes.
Tools for Humanity is therefore committed to cooperation with the authorities. The decision contrasts with its threat last March to take legal measures against the AEPD for prohibiting it from continuing to operate in the country.
The precautionary measure ordered against Worldcoin, which was endorsed by the National Court, came after the AEPD received at least 13 complaints in which insufficient information was reported to users about what was going to be done with their data, the capture of data of minors or that withdrawal of consent was not allowed, among others. Since the summer, Tools for Humanity has collected high-resolution photographs of the irises of 400,000 users in exchange for about 80 euros in the worldcoin cryptocurrency, which was deposited in a personal wallet. Some users later had problems exchanging their cryptocurrencies into euros.
The Worldcoin phenomenon became visible in March, when queues were organized in several shopping centers throughout Spain. These were the places chosen by the company to place its orbs, balls with an iris scanner. Without registering the eye you cannot open an account at Worldcoin.
Biometric data is especially sensitive because it is immutable. We can change our password or our address, but the pattern that describes the shape of each person’s iris is unique and hardly changes over the years. The iris is a more effective identification method than the face scan carried out by facial recognition systems. Due to the sensitivity of this data, it is treated especially strictly by the General Data Protection Regulation, the reference European standard. Hence, in recent weeks, many privacy experts could not believe that a company could start collecting iris data for everyone to see and without giving hardly any information to those affected.
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