Two days after WhatsApp announced a new username feature, the government wants to know what it means for a country where online fraud is already being carried out using hidden identities.
WhatsApp’s username feature is a way to send messages to someone without handing over a phone number, and it’s a real privacy upgrade, one that users have been enjoying on competing apps for years.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), which issued a notice to WhatsApp on Wednesday, sought to answer a narrower question: In a country where impersonation scams and untraceable numbers run rampant, does the same privacy feature also make it difficult to trace who is behind the message?
The ministry gave WhatsApp three days to explain and asked the company to postpone full publication until consultations were completed. The reservation phase, a step that allows users to claim an ID before the feature launches, falls outside this comment and remains open.
This is not the first time the ministry has raised this concern. Before the courts, the government flagged Telegram’s username system as vulnerable to the same abuse. But the difference this time may be on a large scale. WhatsApp has a global user base at least three times larger than Telegram’s.
On Wednesday, Hindustan Times also retained the name @dcp.north, modeled after the real Delhi Police, without any ban from WhatsApp. Former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, on X, raised similar concerns.
In a statement, Meta said the phone number will remain behind each username and can still be traced. What he didn’t mention was whether the reserved handle was checked again before it was deployed.
Read also | How does the new username feature work in WhatsApp? Here’s how to chat without a phone number
What is the advantage?
Usernames allow a WhatsApp user to create a handle — the @ sign — that others can send messages to, instead of a phone number. The number remains associated with the account behind the scenes, but is no longer visible to other users.
WhatsApp has framed this as a privacy tool, a way to communicate with strangers, sell online or share contact details without having to give out a personal number. This feature will be optional, and WhatsApp said it will be rolled out gradually throughout the rest of this year, including in India.
What has it allowed users to do so far?
WhatsApp is yet to release the usernames directly. It has opened a reservation window that allows the user to claim a handle before the feature is rolled out.
A reserved username does not mean it is final, but WhatsApp has not mentioned whether these reserved handles will face a second round of review before being activated.
The company’s “help documentation” states that names associated with public figures, trademarks, organizations and government agencies “may be restricted or reserved to the rightful owner” — a suggestion of some built-in controls against impersonation.
A WhatsApp spokesperson said of the protection: “To protect against impersonation, we have kept high-profile names – such as public figures, government bodies, celebrities and verified meta accounts – so that they can only be claimed by their rightful owners, and similar derivatives of well-known names are also kept.”
Government concerns
MeitY’s concerns relate to the potential use of the messaging app by online scammers.
The Ministry of Communications raised a separate concern: how usernames will sit alongside its SIM linking directive, which requires messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Arattai and Snapchat to link accounts to physical SIM cards for tracking.
A Transport Department official told HT that the main risks are jurisdictional. A handle designed to resemble a real designation, registered against a foreign number, would be much more difficult for Indian law enforcement agencies to act on a number associated with +91. The same official cited WhatsApp’s response time to law enforcement requests as at least five days, and sometimes longer, without immediate data sharing.
Meta’s response to this was that the phone number would remain mandatory upon registration and would be traceable, ensuring accountability.
Read also | How to Reserve Your WhatsApp Username: Step by Step Guide
Why fears persist
size: Telegram, the platform to which officials compared the move to WhatsApp, has about 1 billion active users through its founder’s own account. In contrast, WhatsApp has approximately 3.3 billion users worldwide. Whatever the risks involved, the username feature will likely be tested on more than three times the population it was previously tested on.
How the fraud model actually works: Digital arrests and impersonation scams – in which scammers often pretend to be law enforcement officials such as police officers, CBI officials or judges via video calls – already rely on online users being unable to verify who they are actually talking to. A username system that hides a number by design removes another check that the wary recipient might have used.
Regulatory record: Police cybercrime units previously said that Telegram’s visibility of only the username makes it very difficult to identify suspects. The DoT’s TIUE (Telecommunications Identifier User Entity) framework, which includes a mobile number cancellation list and financial fraud risk indicator systems that flag and act on suspicious numbers, is also built on the number being visible and traceable across platforms.
What HT found, what politicians say
HT on Wednesday retained the handle @dcp.north, styled on the real Delhi Police profile. WhatsApp has allowed this, without any ban or warning. This designation is commonly used in the local language rather than the officially registered name of a police entity, so the test may be on the edge of any list of protected names rather than demonstrating a clear violation of the standards.
Former Delhi MP CM Manish Sisodia also said on X that he cannot maintain multiple combinations of his name and that of his party AAP. Likewise, independent researchers claimed to have retained the name @linkedin. HT was unable to confirm this independently.
Meta replied
Meta emphasizes that the phone number remains mandatory and traceable behind each username, maintaining accountability even when the number is not visible to others. This answers DoT’s objection to SIM card linking.
But it does not fully answer the impersonation objection. An Internet user or first responder who acts on what they can see only has the handle, not the number behind it, until the investigation is officially terminated — the same resolution time gap that the DoT has already identified.
So far, Meta has not said whether a reserved handle undergoes further verification before launching the feature, whether a list of protected usernames/terms exists and what it covers, or what happens to a reserved handle that was flagged as impersonation before launch.
However, a WhatsApp spokesperson said the company will use systems to detect patterns of abuse and provide context such as account age, shared contacts or groups, and location to provide users with more information.
