India Orders WhatsApp to Pause Username Feature; Company Cites Safety Tools and Questions Legal Basis

India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology directed WhatsApp on July 1 to pause rollout of a username feature. The notice gave the company three days to provide a detailed explanation or face action under the Information Technology Act and intermediary rules.

The ministry stated that the feature may materially increase online fraud, phishing, digital arrest scams, and impersonation attacks.

It added that usernames could facilitate impersonation of individuals, government authorities, financial institutions, and public agencies. WhatsApp said the feature is not yet live and will be rolled out in phases later in 2026. The company stated that users still require a phone number to create an account.

It has reserved highest-profile usernames for legitimate owners while holding lookalike derivatives of known names. WhatsApp added that it will limit how many new people an account can contact, block repeated attempts to guess usernames, and maintain systems to detect and remove activity showing common impersonation and abuse patterns.

Recipients will see information about first-time contacts, including whether they are a new account, already in contacts, share common groups, or are based in another country.

India has more than 850 million WhatsApp users. Federal data showed 102,000 cybercrime cases registered in 2024, an 18 percent increase from the previous year, with nearly three-quarters involving online fraud. Cybercrime incidents more than doubled from 1 million cases in 2022 to nearly 2.3 million in 2024.

In February 2026 India amended its rules to require social media platforms to remove unlawful content within three hours of notification. Last month authorities temporarily banned Telegram during the retest of a national medical entrance examination.