Meta Defends WhatsApp Usernames After India Warns of Cybercrime Rise

U.S. social media giant Meta Platforms has defended the rollout of usernames on its messaging platform, after the Indian government on Wednesday said the move could lead to a rise in cybercrime.

"Users still require a phone number to use WhatsApp, and we've built multiple layers of defense against scams into usernames," 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 enable systems to detect and remove activity demonstrating common patterns associated with impersonation or abuse.

It added that the username feature is not live and will be rolled out "slowly later this year." On Monday, WhatsApp introduced usernames, claiming it to be a "major privacy feature" designed to help people stay connected without giving away phone numbers.

According to a report by Indian news agency ANI, the Indian government said that the username 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."

It has given WhatsApp three days to furnish a detailed explanation on the feature or face action under the country's information technology regulations. The company has been directed to pause the rollout of the feature until the government's concerns are addressed.

While user privacy does play a role in policymaking, the "sharp rise in cyber-enabled financial crime has undoubtedly shifted the center of gravity towards security," Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC.

Meta's own Adversarial Threat report in March found that online scam syndicates targeted users in India more frequently than any country other than the U.S. According to the Indian government, cybercrime incidents more than doubled in 2024 to nearly 2.3 million cases from 1 million cases in 2022.

India has more than half a billion WhatsApp users, and this scale makes it prone to government scrutiny, experts said.

WhatApp's reach, coupled with the username feature, means "misinformation could spread even faster," and scammers could use familiar names and photos to impersonate people, said Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research.

Some of these concerns are being addressed by Meta. The company told CNBC that it would reserve the highest-profile names, which can only be claimed by their legitimate owners, and withhold lookalike derivatives of known names to protect against impersonation.

Governments increasingly expect digital platforms to share responsibility for reducing harm, Bhattacharya said, but added that it is difficult "to draw the line between legitimate regulation and measures that could discourage innovation or weaken user privacy."

The government oversight of WhatsApp's username feature comes just weeks after India temporarily banned Telegram to prevent exam fraud during a crucial national test.

The government said that the platform hosted several channels that made false claims to have leaked test papers and then demanded money from candidates and their families for access. Telegram responded that the move punished "150 million ordinary users of the app" in India, and not those who leaked the exam material.