The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) is working on common standards for messaging platforms operating in India, as it moves to formally oppose WhatsApp’s proposed username feature over concerns that it could fuel impersonation, online fraud and digital arrests while making law enforcement investigations more difficult, a government official familiar with the matter told HT.
“We do not support WhatsApp offering this feature. Given its huge user base in India, usernames can make impersonation, digital arrests, online fraud and even law enforcement investigations more difficult,” the official said. WhatsApp has more than three billion users around the world, and India is among its largest markets.
The push for a common standard amounts to an attempt to fill a newly discovered regulatory gap: For now, the department has turned off one platform’s feature while competitors offer the same, without a rule that explicitly permits or denies such action.
“We are also looking to bring common standards for messaging platforms so that there is legal backing for such decisions. We cannot prevent one platform from rolling out a feature while allowing others to continue offering the same,” the official said. The rules should be uniform for everyone. We will discuss this with all messaging platforms before making a final decision.”
The development comes a day after WhatsApp and Telegram submitted their responses to Meity notices, which purportedly explain the safeguards built into their username features. An official, who requested to remain anonymous, said that the government was studying the two responses, but did not provide details about the responses.
Signal, which received a notification alongside Telegram on July 3, has not yet responded.
Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho, which owns messaging app Arattai, said in a July 2 post on X that the company will disable the messaging app’s username-based account feature “to comply with regulatory change.”
Meta first opened up username reservations on WhatsApp in a blog post on June 29, ahead of a planned global rollout at the end of the year, framing the feature as a privacy tool that allows users to connect without sharing a phone number.
In India, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and Arattai operate as intermediaries under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which require them to exercise due diligence, assist law enforcement and comply with lawful government orders.
Neither law sets common rules on what features a messaging platform can or cannot offer — a gap that officials say the ministry is now looking to fill.
The ministry’s increased scrutiny has drawn opposition from digital rights advocates and some legal experts, who question whether the IT Act and its rules give Meity the authority to regulate how messaging services are designed.
The Internet Freedom Foundation described it as a “license for software features,” and said in one of its blogs: “MeitY does not cite any provision that would allow it to approve a product feature before it is released or request its withdrawal, because there are none, and the provisions it cites do not provide that authority.”
Dhruv Garg, partner at policy consultancy Indian Governance and Policy Project (IGAP), believes that while uniform standards are acceptable, they should not force messaging platforms to fundamentally redesign their products. “If MeitY intends to introduce standards for messaging intermediaries, it will likely be framed as a due diligence measure under the Intermediary Guidelines. While creating uniform obligations for messaging platforms is reasonable, such compliance measures should never alter their infrastructure or compromise their inherent nature as neutral, third-party channels for information.”
In response to the government’s audit and to HT’s previous inquiries, a Meta spokesperson said the company had built several safeguards against impersonation and fraud into the feature. This includes reserving usernames associated with existing Facebook and Instagram accounts, protecting usernames for public figures, government agencies, and verified profiles, using automated systems to detect impersonation, limiting the number of new people who can connect to an account through a username, limiting the number of times a username can be changed, and blocking accounts or canceling usernames in the event of abuse.
The company added that when a user receives the first message from outside their contacts, WhatsApp will show whether the sender’s account is new, whether the two have shared groups, and whether the sender is based in another country – giving the recipient the option to trust, block, or report before responding.
