India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has directed Meta to freeze the phased rollout of WhatsApp’s new username feature in the country and to submit a detailed justification within three days. The intervention, communicated in a letter dated 1 July, immediately bars the feature from going live in WhatsApp’s largest market, home to more than half a billion users, until consultations with the government conclude to its satisfaction.

The feature, which Meta began rolling out globally this week, allows users to reserve a unique handle and eventually exchange messages without sharing phone numbers. Indian authorities argue that replacing visible phone numbers with usernames could materially increase online fraud, phishing, digital arrest scams and impersonation attacks. The notice warns that bad actors could adopt usernames closely resembling those of individuals, financial institutions or government agencies, making it harder for less digitally literate users to distinguish genuine contacts from fraudulent ones. The government has invoked the Information Technology Act and intermediary due-diligence rules, reminding WhatsApp that as a significant social media intermediary it must prevent the platform from facilitating cybercrime.

The move widens a regulatory crackdown on messaging anonymity that began weeks earlier with a temporary block of Telegram, partly over similar concerns that number-hiding tools were being exploited in scams. Within a day of the WhatsApp notice, the ministry sent similar queries to Telegram and Signal, both of which already offer username-based communication, asking how they address impersonation and fraud risks and, in Telegram’s case, why the feature should be retained. Digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation has criticised the directive as lacking a clear legal basis, arguing that it amounts to the government deciding what software features a company may build.

Meta has responded that the feature is not yet live for messaging and that it has built multiple layers of defence. These include reserving usernames of public figures, celebrities and verified accounts for their legitimate owners, limiting how many new people an account can contact, and introducing an optional username key that must be known before a stranger can initiate a chat. Users will also see country-of-origin and account-age warnings for first-time contacts. The company maintains that a phone number will still be required to register an account.

The next milestone is Meta’s formal reply to the government, due within the three-day window. The outcome will signal how far Indian regulators are prepared to go in pre-emptively shaping product design on encrypted platforms, with implications for other messaging services operating in the country.