US- and Germany-based technology company Tools For Humanity (TFH) has deleted all data it collected from Kenyans in 2023 for its Worldcoin cryptocurrency project, according to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC).
This follows a May 5, 2025, High Court order directing the firm, co-owned by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to permanently discard all Kenyans’ data that it collected with its eyeball-scanning orbs for more than four months without approval. The court gave the company seven days and directed the ODPC to supervise the deletion.
“Regarding the processing of Kenyans’ personal data by Tools For Humanity, we confirm that the Data Controller has deleted all biometric data previously collected from Kenyan citizens,” the data protection commissioner’s office said in a notice shared with the Business Daily.
A spokesperson for the ODPC did not confirm how much data had been collected from Kenyans. The notice added that the data commissioner’s office was “dedicated to enforcing the law, protecting data subjects, and ensuring that all data controllers and processors are held accountable for any non-compliance.”
Worldcoin’s public sign-ups rolled out globally on June 24, 2023. The project aimed to improve the cryptocurrency industry by creating digital IDs for users, thereby eliminating the use of pseudonyms that have long left the sector vulnerable to scams and spam bots.
Kenyans lined up in Nairobi to scan their iris patterns through an orb in exchange for a digital identity called World ID, which proved they are human and allowed them to conduct transactions. The company incentivised uptake by offering 25 free cryptocurrency tokens worth about Sh8,200 at the time.
However, the government suspended the exercise on August 2, 2023, raising questions about the security of the biodata that TFH was collecting from Kenyans. Before the public rollout, Worldcoin had been operating a pilot phase in Kenya and in countries such as Chile, Indonesia, France and Sudan since May 2021.
The ODPC told the Business Daily that Worldcoin has not resumed data collection in Kenya since the 2023 suspension, even after the Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) dropped a probe into the tech firm in June 2024.
“They have not operated in the country since August 2023,” the agency’s spokesperson said by phone. “If they were to restart the project in Kenya, they would have to go through the right procedures, which entail informing the ODPC of the reason for the data collection, conducting a data protection impact assessment and also proper consent from the subjects.”
Before the public prosecutor dropped the case, there were reports that an agreement had been reached to allow Worldcoin to resume operations in Kenya under new guidelines. The then Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki also acknowledged that the US government was pressuring Kenya to lift Worldcoin’s suspension.
According to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the ODPP directed that the case file be closed after “expeditiously and objectively” investigating the concerns surrounding the crypto project’s activities in Kenya.
“Upon review of the file, the Director of Public Prosecutions concurred and directed that the file be closed with no further police action,” the investigative agency said in a June 14, 2024, letter to Worldcoin’s lawyers. The DCI advised TFH to register with the Registrar of Business Registry and acquire licences from the ODPC and the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) going forward.
Other countries that have also suspended the crypto project over privacy concerns include Indonesia, Spain, Hong Kong and Portugal.
