WorldCoin's data collection suspended in Portugal for the collection ...

Portugal's data protection authority, Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD), decided to suspend the data collection activities of cryptocurrency project WorldCoin in the country for 90 days on March 26, 2024. The 90-day restriction is in place till CNPD conducts an investigation into the project and comes up with a final decision. WorldCoin was launched last year in July and essentially provides users with cryptocurrency tokens in exchange for a scan of their face and iris. These scans are conducted through a biometric device called an Orb. These Orbs have been placed in 35 countries across the world. The authority states that it received dozens of reports in the past month about WorldCoin collecting the data of minors without the authorization of their parents or other legal representatives, and also about the cryptocurrency's failure to provide sufficient information to those signing up for it. CNPD pointed out that more than 300,000 people in Portugal had already provided their biometric data to WorldCoin via "Orbs" that have been placed across the country. It contends that WorldCoin lacks a method to verify the ages of individuals providing their biometric data. The authority says that biometric data qualifies as special data under the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), further adding that processing the biometric information of minors is illegal. This closely follows the suspension of WorldCoin's services in Spain earlier this month, with the Spanish data protection authority also expressing concern about the project collecting minors' data. Spain had also received…