Worldcoin has deleted all biometric data collected from Kenyan citizens after a High Court ruled that the information was unlawfully obtained.
The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) confirmed the development in a public notice dated January 20, 2026, stating that Tools for Humanity—the organisation behind the Worldcoin project—had fully complied with the court’s directive.
The deleted data included iris scans captured using Worldcoin’s “Orb” devices during a mass registration exercise in Kenya in 2023. At the time, thousands of Kenyans queued to sign up for the cryptocurrency project in exchange for digital tokens, raising widespread concerns over data privacy and security.
In May 2025, the High Court found that Worldcoin violated Kenya’s Data Protection Act, 2019, by collecting sensitive biometric data without conducting mandatory data protection impact assessments or obtaining valid informed consent from participants.
The court ordered Worldcoin to permanently delete all biometric data belonging to Kenyan citizens within seven days and prohibited any further processing of such data unless the company complied fully with Kenyan data protection laws.
Worldcoin’s operations in Kenya had earlier been suspended in August 2023 following public outcry and regulatory scrutiny over its data collection practices. A subsequent audit by the ODPC has now confirmed that all the biometric data has been deleted, bringing the long-running legal and regulatory dispute to a close.
