The case mentioned in the article published by the Ministry of State Security of China is likely related to Worldcoin, a project co-founded by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, with the number $WLD .

Worldcoin was launched in July 2023, paying users WLD tokens in exchange for using its spherical iris scanner to scan their irises. After confirming that the user is a real human, a World ID is assigned to the user for creating an online wallet to store tokens.

In February 2024, the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner’s Office launched an investigation into the project due to serious personal data privacy risks associated with collecting users' iris information through iris scanning.

In September 2024, the South Korean Personal Information Protection Commission also imposed a fine of 1.1 billion Korean won (approximately 5.799 million RMB) on Worldcoin for illegally collecting the iris information of about 30,000 users in South Korea and transferring it overseas.