India
oi-Madhuri Adnal
The Centre on Wednesday issued a notice to WhatsApp, a free messaging application owned by Meta (formerly Facebook), seeking a detailed explanation within three days of the newly proposed rollout of WhatsApp’s username feature in India.
The new feature, publicly announced on June 29, 2026, lets users reserve unique usernames and connect without sharing their phone numbers with anyone.
India’s Centre has asked Meta-owned WhatsApp for a three-day explanation regarding its proposed username feature, announced June 29, 2026, citing concerns over potential impersonation, identity theft, and digital fraud risks.
The Centre, in the notice, said it would raise the risks of impersonation, identity theft, and digital fraud on the Meta-owned messaging platform.
“It is felt that the feature may materially increase the incidence of online fraud, phishing, digital arrest scams, and impersonation attacks by enabling bad actors to solicit and message victims. Furthermore, this feature may facilitate impersonation and identity spoofing, including impersonation of individuals, public authorities, financial institutions, and government agencies, by permitting the adoption of usernames closely resembling those of genuine persons or institutions,” the notice stated.
The company, which announced the feature as a major privacy upgrade on Monday, has started allowing users to reserve usernames.
According to Meta, it had built safeguards into the username feature to address the threat of impersonation.
“To protect against impersonation, we’ve held the highest-profile names like public figures, government entities, celebrities, and verified Meta accounts so they can only ever be claimed by their legitimate owners and lookalike derivatives of known names are held as well,” the spokesperson said.
Other defences include requiring the exact username to initiate contact, limiting new outreach, and blocking automated guessing attempts.
WhatsApp will use systems to detect abuse patterns and provide context on new messengers such as account age, shared contacts or groups, and location to help users decide whether to respond, the spokesperson said.
