Hong Kong Court Rules Worldcoin (WLD) Violates Privacy Laws, Orders Cease of Iris Data Collection from Hong Kong Citizens
Collecting facial and iris images has been deemed unnecessary and excessive. Worldcoin unfairly collects personal data, and related documents lack a Chinese version. The staff at the operational site failed to fully explain or confirm the participants’ understanding of the document’s content and did not inform them of the risks or answer their questions.
Participants were not clearly informed of the purpose of collecting personal data, whether it was voluntary to provide the data, the recipients of data transfers, and their statutory rights to access and rectify information.
Worldcoin retains personal data for up to 10 years for training artificial intelligence models for identity verification procedures, which is considered excessive retention of personal data.
The transparency of the policies and practices for handling personal data is insufficient, and the lack of a Chinese version of the Privacy Statement makes it difficult for participants whose native language is Chinese to understand the relevant policies and terms.
Participants were unable to exercise their rights to access and rectify personal data.
