The Chinese are massively forging Worldcoin (WLD) verification with the help of residents of Africa
Date: 2023-08-03 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: BLOCKCHAIN, IN WORLD
Chinese journalist Colin Wu shared a study on how Chinese people are cheating on the identity verification (KYC) system of the Worldcoin (WLD) project.
A "businessman" named Allen paid Kenyans for Worldcoin verification and then resold the accounts to Chinese users. He worked in Africa for three months, at his peak earning $3,000 a day at a location where iris testing was possible. The most profitable period was in May, when Worldcoin was gaining popularity in China.
“My employees took hired workers for KYC iris checks. At first, we were paying workers $1 per job, but as new third-party review teams came in, the competition got tougher and their wages rose to $3,” Allen said.
As the popularity of Worldcoin grew, more people in China wanted to join the project. In the early stages, the cost of creating an account ranged from $6 to $7, but later it increased to $9-$12. In June, when Worldcoin gained significant popularity in China, Allen and his team checked on about a hundred people every day at each location. However, this profitable period did not last long. About a week later, local operators noticed that something was wrong.
This business was run by about ten Chinese teams, resulting in thousands of false user accounts per day. However, Allen believes that in this way he helped the development of the project in Kenya - without him there would be no more than ten registrations per day.
Activity ban in Kenya
The Kenyan Ministry of the Interior has suspended Worldcoin local operations while authorities assess potential public safety risks.
"Relevant security, financial and data protection authorities have launched investigations to establish the authenticity and legality of the aforementioned activities," Interior Minister Kiture Kindiki said in a statement.
In total, over 350,000 Kenyans have registered with Worldcoin in exchange for free WLD tokens. He noted that the government is concerned about the activities of the startup, and agencies will find out how he intends to use the data he collects.
Worldcoin under the gun of regulators
Earlier, journalists found out that the Bavarian State Data Protection Supervision Authority launched an investigation against Worldcoin back in 2022. The reason for the investigation, which is still ongoing, is the fears around the processing of sensitive data in large volumes.
Moreover, the French regulator for data protection (CNI) questions the legality of collecting user biometric data. The UK data regulator is also looking into the startup's work.
