India Halts WhatsApp Username Feature Over Fraud Fears
India has ordered Meta to suspend the rollout of WhatsApp’s new username feature within its borders, warning that the privacy tool could deepen a cybercrime crisis that already costs citizens billions of dollars each year.
The directive came from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in a notice sent to WhatsApp on Wednesday, July 1, 2026. The ministry told the Meta owned platform not to activate the feature for Indian users until consultations are concluded, and demanded a detailed explanation, backed by documents, within three days. It questioned why regulatory action should not be initiated under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Information Technology Rules, 2021.
At the centre of the dispute is a change WhatsApp announced on June 29, allowing its more than three billion users worldwide to reserve unique usernames and, in time, message one another without revealing their phone numbers. WhatsApp has described the shift, its biggest privacy overhaul in years, as a core privacy feature, adding that phone numbers remain required for registration and that an optional username key gives users extra control over who can reach them.
Indian officials see the matter differently. The ministry warned that the feature “may materially increase the incidence of online fraud, phishing, digital arrest scams and impersonation attacks” by letting bad actors contact victims while masking their identity. It flagged the danger of usernames closely resembling those of genuine individuals, public authorities, banks, and government agencies.
Those fears are grounded in hard numbers. According to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Indians lost about N22,495 crore, roughly 2.7 billion dollars, to cyber fraud in 2025, with complaint volume climbing 24 percent to about 2.81 million cases. Over six years, cumulative losses have reached about N52,976 crore. Investment scams accounted for roughly three quarters of the money stolen last year.
The most feared category is the so called digital arrest, a homegrown scam in which fraudsters posing as police, customs, or anti graft officers keep victims on prolonged video calls and extort money under threat of arrest. More than 30,000 such complaints were filed in 2025, and India’s Supreme Court estimated related losses near N3,000 crore for the year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned about the scam in his October 2024 Mann Ki Baat broadcast, calling it among the gravest threats facing citizens.
India, WhatsApp’s largest market with well over half a billion users, has clashed with the platform before over encryption, traceability, and content moderation. This latest intervention has drawn criticism too. The Internet Freedom Foundation, a Delhi based digital rights group, argued the notice “has no clear basis in law” and warned against the executive dictating what features a company may build.
The stand off echoes an earlier Delhi High Court observation, in a case involving Telegram, that username based messaging could make it easier to conceal identity and spread illicit content. For now, the feature is live in some markets but remains switched off in India while Meta prepares its response and both sides await the outcome of consultations expected to shape how the tool finally arrives, if it does at all.