Govt issues notice to WhatsApp over username feature

WhatsApp’s new username feature — which will allow users to interact without exposing their phone numbers — is drawing skepticism from the Union government, with a senior official saying on Wednesday (July 1, 2026) that the government is worried about the potential for spam and impersonation. The government has sent a notice to WhatsApp, asking it to put the feature on hold for the time being. 

“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,” the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said in the notice addressed to WhatsApp’s chief compliance officer in India, a copy of which The Hindu reviewed.  

The government told the firm “to furnish a detailed explanation on the “usernames” feature within 3 days,” and to avoid proceeding until “detailed consultations” were held, the official said.

The username feature mimics something available on other apps like Telegram and Signal, where users can chat without sharing their phone numbers. “When someone new walks into your life – a classmate, a neighbor, someone you meet at an event – sharing a phone number can feel like a big step,” Meta, which owns WhatsApp, said in an announcement earlier this week. “That’s because a phone number is personal and it’s tied to so many parts of your life. Sometimes you just want to chat without handing over your digits.”

“The ability to use a username is not yet live and will roll out slowly later this year,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement shared with The Hindu. “To protect against impersonation, we’ve held the highest-profile names — think public figures, government entities, celebrities, verified Meta accounts — so they can only ever be claimed by their legitimate owners and lookalike derivatives of known names are held as well.” Users can choose whether or not to reply to unknown accounts, and their origin country will be displayed, the firm added.

The feature would come with in-built spam detection features, such as disclosing to message recipients what country a phone number is from, Meta said in its announcement. “To help control who can reach you on WhatsApp with your username, we’ve built an optional username key that others will need to know to message you,” the company had said.

The notice comes days after the Union government banned Telegram over concerns that backdated question papers could spread panic amid the National Eligibility cum Entrance Examination’s second installment after the first paper leaked. Telegram obscuring phone numbers of users in favour of a username was also factored into the ban, which survived a challenge in the Delhi High Court, and has been lifted now.

WhatsApp controls

WhatsApp is a privately owned messaging platform that works on the internet, but the Union government has increasingly asserted itself on large platforms. Last year, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) ordered Meta to make sure that users can’t use the app if the SIM card they used to register for the service is not physically in the service, and to log out WhatsApp Web users every six hours. While the latter mandate was rolled back, the former remains.

WhatsApp has over 800 million users in India, over a fourth of their global 3 billion user base. While the firm has resisted compromises on its end-to-end encryption for messages — by challenging a part of the IT Rules before the Delhi High Court — Meta has signaled a more cooperative attitude in more recent years, such as by moving to comply with the SIM binding directions. 

The role of WhatsApp as essential infrastructure has also led to government scrutiny. Following a 2022 downtime incident, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology would seek an explanation for the incident from Meta.