Spain to Sam Altman’s Worldcoin: Stop Collecting User Data

Spain has ordered Sam Altman’s cryptocurrency project Worldcoin to cease collecting its citizens’ data.

The order Wednesday (March 6) from the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) also blocks the data the project has already collected using its eyeball-scanning orb.

“The AEPD has received several complaints against this company about insufficient information, the collection of data from minors and the fact that consent cannot be withdrawn, among other infringements,” the agency said in a news release. 

In a statement provided to PYMNTS, Worldcoin Data Protection Officer Jannick Preiwisch said the AEPD actions were contrary to EU law, and accused the regulator of spreading misleading, inaccurate claims about the company’s tech.

“Our efforts to engage with the AEPD and provide them with an accurate view of Worldcoin and World ID have gone unanswered for months,” Preirwisch said. “We are grateful to now have the opportunity to help them better understand the important facts regarding this essential and lawful technology.”

Worldcoin’s founders initially said they wanted to spread the scope of cryptocurrency and financial services as a whole to a broader range of users. 

Last July, the company said that it was rolling its biometric orb technology in 35 cities throughout 20 nations in order to capture participants’ biometrics and give them a “proof of personhood.”

As of December, more than 2.6 million people had signed up to have their irises scanned by the project’s orb devices in exchange for a digital ID and free cryptocurrency.

But the project has also received pushback in our countries. Kenya last August suspended Worldcoin’s operations amid a government investigation.

“The Government is concerned by the ongoing activities of an organization calling itself ‘WORLD COIN’ which is involved in the registration of citizens through the collection of eyeball/iris data,” Minister Kithure Kindiki said in a release on the ministry’s Facebook page.

And the U.K’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) told PYMNTS it would be “making further inquiries” into Worldcoin soon after its debut.

Worldcoin responded by saying it adheres to all data processing laws in the markets where it is on offer, including in Great Britain.

“From its inception, Worldcoin was designed to protect individual privacy,” the company said in an emailed statement to PYMNTS at the time. “The project has implemented privacy-centric design and has built a robust privacy program, conducting a rigorous Data Protection Impact Assessment and responding timely to individual requests to delete their personal data.”

Mar España Martí, AEPD director, told the Financial Times that Spain was the first country in Europe to take this step against Worldcoin.

“What we have done is raise the alarm in Europe. But this is an issue that affects … citizens in all the countries of the European Union,” she said. “That means there has to be coordinated action.”