Meta says WhatsApp usernames are safe from scams after India after India flags cybersecurity
Tourists are seen on the forecourt of the iconic Gateway of India as the digital screen of messaging app WhatsApp is viewed on August 25, 2023 in Mumbai.
Indranil Mukherjee | AFP | Getty Images
US social media giant Meta Platforms He defended making usernames available on the messaging platform after the Indian government said on Wednesday that the move could lead to a rise in cybercrime.
“Users still need a phone number to use WhatsApp, and we have built multiple layers of defense against username scams,” a Meta spokesperson told CNBC in an email.
The tech company said it will limit the number of new people an account can contact, block repeated attempts to guess usernames and allow systems to detect and remove activity that shows common patterns associated with impersonation or abuse.
He added that the username feature is not live and will be rolled out “slowly later this year.” On Monday, WhatsApp introduced usernames, saying it’s “great privacy feature It was designed to help people stay connected without giving out their phone number.
According to the news of Indian news agency ANI, the Indian government said that the username feature “can significantly increase the incidence Preventing online fraud, phishing, digital capture fraud and impersonation attacks by allowing bad actors to solicit and send messages to victims.”
WhatsApp was given three days to issue a detailed statement about the feature or face action under the country’s information technology regulations. The company was instructed to halt the rollout of the feature until the government’s concerns were addressed.
Security over privacy
While user privacy plays a role in policymaking, “the sharp increase in cyber-enabled financial crimes has undoubtedly shifted the center of gravity towards security,” Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC.
Meta’s own Contested Threat report in March found that online fraud organizations Target users in India More cybercrime incidents than any other country except the US, according to the Indian government More than doubled in 2024 From 1 million cases to approximately 2.3 million cases in 2022.
There are more than half a billion WhatsApp users in India, experts said, and that scale leaves the country open to government scrutiny.
Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research, said WhatApp’s reach combined with its username feature means “misinformation can spread even faster” and scammers can impersonate people using familiar names and photos.
Some of these concerns are being addressed by Meta. The company told CNBC that it will reserve only the highest-profile names that can be claimed by legitimate owners and similar derivatives of household names to protect against impersonation.
Bhattacharya said governments increasingly expected digital platforms to share responsibility for reducing harm, but added that it was difficult to “draw the line between legitimate regulations and measures that could deter innovation or undermine user privacy.”
The government audit of WhatsApp’s username feature comes just weeks after India temporarily banned Telegram to prevent exam fraud during a key national exam.
The government said the platform hosts many channels that make false claims that test papers have been leaked and then demand money from candidates and their families for access. Telegram said the move punished “150 million ordinary users of the app” in India, not those who leaked the exam material.
