The Consumer Prosecutor’s Office of Sao Paolo stressed that World focused on attracting people in situations of economic vulnerability and maintained this practice even after the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) ordered the suspension of offering crypto rewards for biometric data.
Key Takeaways
São Paulo sued World and AWS for exploiting vulnerable populations to collect biometric data for crypto.The lawsuit seeks to halt crypto payments and demands $47 million to compensate 400,000 affected consumers.Prosecutors allege World ignored a 2025 order to halt payments and hid AWS data storage risks from users.São Paulo has taken action against Tools for Humanity, the company behind World (formerly known as Worldcoin), for its biometric collection activities, and against Amazon AWS for its role as World’s hosting provider.
The lawsuit, which estimates that over 400K people participated in World’s Sao Paolo rollout, petitions for the preservation of all data and metadata linked to the collection of this information, and for suspending any payment or benefit linked to biometric data collection until an assessment is carried out.
The legal action seeks to label these activities as abusive and receive a payment of 240 million reais (nearly $47 million) in compensation for the consumers’ individual losses.
On its page, World explains that it “does not collect, store or sell any personal data, including iris data, and verified World ID holders are anonymous.”
World has already faced similar actions in Argentina, where it was hit with a $200K fine for various National Consumer Defense Law violations, including allowing minors to enroll in the initiative due to lax ID checks and failing to disclose its biometric data-processing procedures.
