The Bavarian data-protection authority (BayLDA) ordered Worldcoin to delete millions of stored iris hashes for violating the EU’s GDPR, proving that the hashes remain personally identifiable data under European law despite World’s “anonymisation” claims

Opposing arguments

AMPC’s MPC pipeline retains raw iris codes on-device, ensuring that biometric images never leave the Orb

Core Orb firmware and biometric pipeline are open-source, allowing anyone to audit that no personal data is retained

An independent Trail of Bits audit found no path to extract personally-identifiable data from production Orbs

World ID relies on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) that mathematically prevent anyone from linking a person’s World ID across apps.

Quotes that support claims

“All users who have provided ‘Worldcoin’ with their iris data will in future have the unrestricted opportunity to enforce their right to erasure,” said the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision, Michael Will, in a press statement. The biometric venture has been given one month from the Bavarian authority’s decision date to implement a deletion procedure “that complies with the provisions of the GDPR” — so mark your calendars for early 2025. A further component of the Bavarian order requires Worldcoin to obtain explicit consent for what the press statement (vaguely) describes as “certain processing steps in the future.”

Related projects

Related topics

Sources

World(coin) must let Europeans comprehensively delete their data, under privacy order

Supporting arguments

South Korea’s Personal‑Information Protection Commission fined Worldcoin ₩1.1 billion (≈ US$0.8 m) for illegally collecting 30 000 irises and transferring the data overseas without consent.

Prominent technologists warn the Orb scheme could create a dystopian biometric registry

Tags

Orbs present a risk to user privacy