Does Worldcoin seek to know my identity?
No. Worldcoin doesn’t seek to know who you are, only that you’re unique.
Is information like my name, email address, phone number, etc. required to use Worldcoin?
No.
At the center of the Worldcoin project is World ID, a secure and private digital passport that verifies humanness to help distinguish people from bots online. Currently World ID can be held in World App, the first wallet for the Worldcoin project which was built and is maintained by project contributor TFH.
Both World ID and World App are fully self custodial when it comes to World ID keys and the non-custodial wallet, and no information like name, email address, phone number, etc. is required to download and use World App or to verify and use World ID.
Who controls my information after verifying my World ID?
You do. Worldcoin has implemented Personal Custody, which means that the information (images, metadata and derived data) generated at the orb and used to generate the iris code, or numerical representation of the unique texture of the iris, during World ID verification is held on your device. Your information is always deleted from the orb once it has been sent to your device.
This approach gives you control over the flow of this data—not just deletion, but any future use prior to being deleted.
Learn more about Personal Custody.
Personal Custody: your information, always deleted from the orb, securely held on your device. pic.twitter.com/uxe9fFci1n
— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) March 26, 2024
Does the orb store my biometric images?
No. Your information is always deleted from the orb once it has been sent to your device.
Does the orb have protections in place to ensure biometric data is secure?
Yes.
The orb features diverse, highly-advanced security features designed to ensure that data is secure and cannot be accessed by anyone unauthorized to do so. It’s equipped with a powerful computing unit to run several neural networks concurrently in real-time, which enables it to validate a person’s humanness and generate iris codes locally on the device.
The security experts at Trail of Bits performed a specialized audit of the orb’s software, which can be reviewed here.
Learn more about Worldcoin data security protections.
Learn more about the technical readout of the orb’s data security protections.
Learn more about the orb’s open source software.
Are there safeguards to protect my privacy when using World ID?
Yes.
When a person uses their World ID, a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) prevents third parties from knowing the person’s public key or tracking the person across applications. ZKPs also protect the use of World ID from being tied to any biometric data or the iris code of the person.
World ID uses an open source protocol known as Semaphore that confirms the World ID data itself (public key and nullifier) verifications cannot be tracked to a person’s identity nor to verifications in other applications.
Is my World ID a set of my iris images?
No.
Your World ID is generated locally on your device before any humanness checks take place. The orb is only used to verify your World ID and, if necessary, to recover it.
World ID is explicitly not a set of iris images, nor is it the iris code generated from those images.
Instead, the iris code that the Orb outputs is compared against all other iris codes previously generated by all other Orbs. If the person has not been verified before, their World ID (which is generated on their device and not itself derived from the iris images) is added to the list of verified World IDs.
Are iris codes securely protected?
Yes.
The Worldcoin Foundation and TACEO, a team of cryptography engineers, developed and open sourced an unprecedented secure multi-party computation (SMPC) system that allows the iris codes to be individually encrypted into multiple different secret shares held by multiple parties. These parties can then work together to compute results over the secret information without learning anything about the secret itself.
Learn more about this breakthrough in privacy protection for iris codes.
Is there community support for Worldcoin’s privacy initiatives?
Yes. In his in-depth look at proof of personhood, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin lists specialized biometric hardware like the orb as the most privacy preserving option currently available for proof of personhood solutions.
“IMO they [Worldcoin] actually have been doing quite a good job of taking the privacy critiques seriously and designing their system to be more and more data-minimal,” Buterin wrote on X. “Modern cryptography is truly amazing.”
Can I access more information about Worldcoin privacy?
Yes. Additional privacy resources can be found at the following links:
- https://worldcoin.org/privacy
- https://worldcoin.org/data-choice
- https://worldcoin.org/blog/developers/privacy-deep-dive
A more comprehensive understanding of all aspects of the Worldcoin project can be found in the Worldcoin whitepaper.
Disclaimer
The above content speaks only as of the date indicated. Further, it is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and so may be incorrect and may change without notice. A full disclaimer can be found in our Terms of Use and Important User Information can be found on our Risks page.