Worldcoin, the controversial project that gives a handful of tokens to users who verify their humanity by scanning their irises, is already the subject of investigation by authorities in at least 8 countries in the world, most recently South Korea.

In a statement, the Commission for the Protection of Personal Information of the Asian country indicated that since last Thursday, February 29, they began investigations into Worldcoin, in response to a series of complaints related to the collection and processing of personal information.

According to the South Korean authority, there are at least 10 places in that country where people are scanning their irises, through Orbs, information that was confirmed by the Worldcoin team to that government entity. On the official Worldcoin website, however, South Korea does not appear as one of the countries where there are currently operational Orbs.

According to the above, the Commission plans to investigate the collection and processing of confidential information, as well as the transfer of personal data abroad. All this, under the South Korean Personal Information Protection Law.

The Personal Information Protection Commission further notified that if any violation is identified, “measures will be taken in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.”

The attention on Worldcoin

With South Korea, 8 countries are turning their attention to Worldcoin and its particular way of verifying whether a user is a real person or a bot , which it does through iris scanning. This is a practice that raises privacy alarms because it is highly personal data and could lend itself to identity falsification.

According to the computer engineer and cybersecurity specialist, José Alejandro Casamitjana, scanning the iris “has the same danger as copying the identification card,” since this is unique and unalterable data, which, when transferred, control is lost. about him.

Since Worldcoin was launched in the middle of last year, the information and personal data regulatory authorities of France , Germany , the United Kingdom, Kenya, Nigeria, Argentina, Spain and, now, South Korea; They find out in detail what the project does with the users' biometric data.

So far, only Kenya has suspended Worldcoin activities. Country's Ministry of the Interior decided to ban the project's operations due to data privacy concerns and security risks for Kenyans.

Before South Korea, Spain was the last country to announce investigations into Worldcoin, precisely because of the issue of iris scanning. The data protection agency confirmed to this medium that there were four complaints related to the handling of information by the cryptocurrency project which they were addressing.