Kenya Suspends Worldcoin Scans Over Security, Privacy, and Financial Concerns

Kenya's Ministry of the Interior has issued a decree suspending Worldcoin enrollment in the country, citing concerns with the "authenticity and legality" of its activities in the areas of security, financial services and data protection. TechCrunch reports: The suspension covers both Worldcoin and "any other entity that may be similarly engaging the people of Kenya" and will remain in place until the authorities determine "the absence of any risks to the general public whatsoever." Up until today, Kenya had one of the largest collections of venues -- at least 18, according to the company's directory last week -- where you could visit an "Orb," as the company's spherical and mirrored iris scanners are called, "and verify your World ID." Now there is only one listed -- after Orb operators, overwhelmed by the huge turnout, shifted their stations on Sunday to Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), a bigger ground in Kenya's capital that could accommodate the thousands of people streaming in.

"Relevant security, financial service and data protection agencies have commenced inquiries and investigations to establish the authenticity and legality of the aforesaid activities, and the safety and protection of the data being harvested, and how the harvesters intend to use the data," said Kithure Kindiki, Kenya's cabinet secretary for the ministry of interior and national administration. The news come amid separate reports that Worldcoin plans to expand its operations to sign up more users globally and allow other organizations to use its iris-scanning and identity-verifying technology.

Further reading: Sam Altman's Worldcoin Eyeball-Scanning Crypto Project Launches

I'll say it again

[Equuleus42]

Using the power of hypertext:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]

I thought Kenya liked scammers...

[TheMiddleRoad]

Oh no, that's Nigeria. My bad.

One is born every minute.

[rlwinm]

I never heard of this. At first I thought it was just another cryptocurrency thing that investor crypto bros can wank off to. But a quick read on Wikipedia tells me it's even worse. I would say that nobody would be dumb enough to use this thing but as the old saying goes: there is one born every minute!

Re:One is born every minute.

[algaeman]

In a country where a large portion of the population is making $1000 a year, getting $50 of magic money for a half hour scanning your eyeballs seems like a good deal. This is just direct exploitation of poverty.

I don't get Worldcoin...

[ctilsie242]

So, to use it, I need to find some round ball, and have it do an iris scan before I'm considered a person in its system? Even though the site talks a lot about privacy and such, I'm not seeing the point, because even if the wallet was made with 100% confidence by it was an individual, the real part is securing it, and we all know how secure cryptocurrency wallets are in general [1].

The start of the assurance may be solid, but after that, the crypto wallet can be hacked at any time, which makes the entire t

Re:

[Qwertie]

Proof-of-personhood is very useful in principle. First there's Worldcoin's selling point as a UBI - which wouldn't really work if a typical person has one account but other tech-savvy people make it their mission to set up 10,000 accounts. But more generally, on the internet, knowing that two pseudonymous accounts are two different people can be useful, as can knowing that an account is associated with a person (even if that person set up bot software on their account - at least the same person can't be re

Minority Report....

[bev_tech_rob]

Hasn't anyone seen that movie? Your iris scan is everything in that movie. You are tracked almost in realtime.