German regulatory authority orders Worldcoin to remove biometric data of human eyes

On December 20th, according to TheBlock, the Bavarian State Data Protection Supervisory Authority in Germany ordered Worldcoin's human verification project to delete biometric data collected through eye scanning. Worldcoin stated that it has changed its procedures, and the investigation by the German regulatory agency largely involves outdated operations and technologies that were replaced in 2024. The Bavarian State Data Protection Supervisory Authority concluded its investigation, which began in April 2023, and stated in a statement on Wednesday that Worldcoin has an obligation to provide a deletion procedure in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) within one month of the decision taking effect, and to delete certain previously collected data records without sufficient legal basis. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, stated that measures have been taken in the past few months to address regulatory concerns, including the transition to a system where Worldcoin no longer stores biometric data. In order to comply with GDPR requirements, the iris code used to verify individual World IDs will no longer be stored, and previously collected iris codes will be voluntarily deleted to ensure that personal data used to operate World IDs is not retained.