WhatsApp’s rollout of a custom username feature designed to protect phone number privacy has been officially halted by the Indian government. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a strict notice demanding an immediate pause over rising cyber fraud risks.
Officials argue that hiding mobile numbers strips away a crucial layer of accountability. Indian tech leaders, including the prominent founders of Paytm and MobiKwik, heavily support this caution, warning against rampant identity theft.
They fear an explosion in sophisticated impersonation, institutional fraud, and extortion schemes. Critics note that removing visible numbers pushes WhatsApp closer to Telegram’s architecture, making online criminals significantly harder to spot. Meta strongly defends the feature as a massive, necessary privacy upgrade.
To neutralize bad actors, WhatsApp has proactively frozen high-profile institutional names, eliminated searchable directories, and introduced anti-guessing blocks alongside contextual safety tags to warn users about suspicious, brand-new accounts messaging them.