MADRID (Reuters) – Sam Altman’s company Worldcoin must delete all iris scanning data collected since the project’s inception, raising privacy concerns in several countries, Spain’s data protection watchdog AEPD said on Thursday.
AEPD cited a decision earlier on Thursday by its Bavarian counterpart BayLDA, with which the agency cooperated on the matter, which found that the project violated the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
World, renamed Worldcoin, has its European headquarters in the German city of Erlangen in Bavaria.
In March, the Spanish Supreme Court upheld a momentary ban on the iris scanning project, rejecting an appeal by Worldcoin’s owners.
Worldcoin, co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2019, aims to create a global identity system by getting people to scan their irises in exchange for free cryptocurrency and a digital ID.
(This story has been corrected to clarify that AEPD was referring to its German counterpart’s decision, not its own, and to specify that Worldcoin’s European headquarters is in Bavaria)
