Kenya is pumping the brakes on Worldcoin — the eyeball-scanning crypto project launched by OpenAI founder Sam Altman.
The Kenyan government has ordered Worldcoin to stop collecting data in the country while it reviews the project for potential privacy and security risks, as reported earlier by Reuters.
The project launched last week and has had people lining up to get their eyeballs scanned by the shiny, silver orbs Worldcoin has set up in major cities around the globe.
In a press release, the Communications Authority of Kenya says it’s going to evaluate Worldcoin due to a “lack of clarity on the security and storage” of the iris scans it’s collecting as well as the “uncertainty” surrounding the attached cryptocurrency.
As a result of the suspension, authorities had to turn away thousands of people waiting in line to get their iris scanned, the Kenyan newspaper The Standard reports.
Despite this, Worldcoin maintains that “biometric data never leaves the orb” and is “permanently deleted” after you sign up.
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I think that the major issue is that they were paying a one time fee for whatever rights they claimed about the biometrics. They should be paying monthly fees instead.