Argentina’s data privacy government agency is following in France and the United Kingdom’s footsteps by investigating the eye-scanning crypto project Worldcoin (WLD).
The Agency of Access to Public Information (AAIP) says in a new press release it’s looking into how the Worldcoin Foundation collects, stores and uses personal data in Argentina.
-->The agency’s new investigation comes on the heels of France’s privacy watchdog, the CNIL, announcing late last month that it planned to probe the hot-button project over the legality of its biometric data collection.
The UK’s data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), also said in a statement in late July that it would be “making inquiries” into the launch of Worldcoin in the UK.
The project, which was co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, utilizes iris scanners to verify users’ identities.
According to the project’s website, Worldcoin consists of a “privacy-preserving” World ID and a digital WLD token that is received by users “simply for being human.” The project plans on deploying 1,500 of its iris-scanning orbs to 35 cities worldwide this summer and fall to meet the “global demand for ID.”
The WLD token was first launched last month. The 156th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is trading at $1.69 at time of writing and is down 7 in the past 24 hours.
