French privacy watchdog CNIL has said that the legality of Worldcoin‘s biometric data collection “seems questionable”, according to a Reuters report today.
The new project, which launched earlier this week, requires users to add their iris scans in exchange for a digital ID and, in some locations, free crypto.
The Worldcoin website says it has registered approximately 2.1 million people, largely from a trial in the past two years.
In a response to Reuters, CNIL commented that: “The legality of this collection seems questionable, as do the conditions for storing biometric data.”
The CNIL reply further added that it had initiated investigations, and said that the Bavarian state authority in Germany has jurisdiction. They also stated that the German authority has begun carrying out the investigation with support from the CNIL.
It follows the news on Tuesday that UK data regulator, the Information Commissions Office (ICO), will also be making enquiries into the new Worldcoin.
The Worldcoin project is known for being co-founded by the OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, along with Alex Blania.
They have said that: “If successful, we believe Worldcoin could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes, and eventually show a potential path to AI-funded UBI.”
However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, has criticised its the project and revealed his scepticism over the iris scans, saying: “At the very least, if someone else scans your iris, they can check it against the database to determine whether or not you have a World ID. Potentially, iris scans might reveal more information.”
At the time of writing, the price of Worldcoin (WLD) was trading at $2.17, down 1.74% in the past day. Its current CoinMarketCap ranking is number 122, with a live market cap of $238,683,917, It has a circulating supply of 110,634,931 WLD coins and a max supply of 10,000,000,000 WLD coins.
