- The privacy agency declared that it has given Worldcoin the order to stop doing business in Hong Kong.
- According to the watchdog, Worldcoin’s collection of face and iris photographs was “unnecessary and excessive,” breaking local privacy laws.
The Worldcoin Foundation was ordered by Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog to stop all operations in the area after it was discovered that the initiative violates local privacy laws.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) said in a statement on Wednesday that Worldcoin had gathered iris and face data from at least 8,302 people while it was operating in Hong Kong.
After ten surreptitious visits to six Worldcoin facilities in December 2023 and January 2024, the PCPD claimed that the excessive and needless information collecting violated the Data Protection Principles.
According to the watchdog, Worldcoin would store user information for up to ten years in order to develop artificial intelligence models for the user verification procedure. According to the PCPD, the retention term was excessively lengthy and amounted to the protracted storage of personal information.
According to the agency, Worldcoin has received an enforcement letter from it ordering it to stop its operations in Hong Kong. If anyone discovers that Worldcoin is still in operation in the city, they should notify the agency, according to Privacy Commissioner Ada Chung.
The Worldcoin Foundation expressed its disappointment in the recent statements issued by Hong Kong’s regulatory authorities. “The Foundation continues to set the standard for privacy through data minimization, user control over data, and cutting-edge technologies like personal custody, iris code deletion, and secure multi-party computation in an effort to ready humanity for the era of artificial intelligence. Regretfully, these factors were disregarded by Hong Kong authorities while assessing the humanness verification procedure.
Worldcoin declared in March that it will no longer be gathering personal information. It says that it will roll out a feature called “Personal Custody,” which will let users keep their data on their own devices.
However, due to its digital ID collection, Worldcoin has encountered difficulties in a number of jurisdictions in recent months.
After receiving complaints over the project’s gathering of personal data, South Korea opened an investigation in March. Portugal and Spain have similarly instructed the initiative to cease gathering biometric information from users.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
