W, Europe’s answer to Elon Musk’s social media platform X, made headlines due to rising tensions with the United States. Following public criticism of X, a group of European organizations set out to solve the problem of pervasive bot activity on social media and internet troll culture.
Cybernews got pre-launch access to W, and its verification system raises security concerns:
- W’s verification system relies on W Identity, a companion app that asks users for highly sensitive data such as selfies and identity documents.
- W says biometric and ID data is deleted after verification and stored through a decentralized system controlled by the user, but security researchers warn that processing this data still creates risk.
- Cybernews security researcher Arnoldas Radišauskas says that “Asking users to upload a passport and a selfie turns a simple signup into a permanent identity record, and unlike a password, you can’t reset your face or your passport number.”
- The biggest concern is immutable identity data. If faces, passports, or ID numbers are leaked, users cannot reset them like passwords, and criminals can use them for identity theft or fraud.
- Users can join W without verification, but they will only be able to read and explore content. Posting and commenting require identity verification.
In July last year, Tea, the women’s-only app for verifying potential dates, suffered a devastating data leak. Hackers accessed a database that housed roughly 72,000 images, 13,000 of which were selfies and photos of IDs and passports that were submitted during the verification process. Tea previously promised to delete this data upon verification, yet years of passports and selfies found themselves in the hands of cybercriminals.
For more information, here’s the full article: https://cybernews.com/privacy/europe-social-media-w-launch-security-risks/
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Europe’s rival to X, W, requires biometric verification, raising security concerns
W, Europe’s answer to Elon Musk’s social media platform X, made headlines due to rising tensions with the United States. Following public criticism of X, a group of European organizations set out to solve the problem of pervasive bot activity on social media and internet troll culture.
Cybernews got pre-launch access to W, and its verification system raises security concerns:
In July last year, Tea, the women’s-only app for verifying potential dates, suffered a devastating data leak. Hackers accessed a database that housed roughly 72,000 images, 13,000 of which were selfies and photos of IDs and passports that were submitted during the verification process. Tea previously promised to delete this data upon verification, yet years of passports and selfies found themselves in the hands of cybercriminals.
For more information, here’s the full article: https://cybernews.com/privacy/europe-social-media-w-launch-security-risks/
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This entry was posted on June 18, 2026 at 8:50 am and is filed under Commentary with tags W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.