Almost all of us know that it is not a good idea to trust an unexpected message that asks for money, personal information or a verification code. But we also know how these scams work: they arrive at the right time, use the name of a well-known company and rely on a profile photo that looks official. A supposed shipping company, a package held, a small fee to pay. There is identity theft, in that mixture of legitimate appearance, urgency and misplaced trust.
The new piece. The change that WhatsApp has begun to prepare now comes to that familiar terrain. The application has started username reservation ahead of a broader rollout planned for this year. The idea is simple: that we can find and write to each other using an identifier instead of always depending on the phone number. On paper, it makes a lot of sense from a privacy standpoint, but there are nuances to this.
Privacy with fine print. The discussion isn’t about whether usernames are a good or bad idea. In fact, reducing phone number exposure can provide a clear benefit for millions of people. The point is another: every new way of identifying ourselves also becomes a new way of recognizing ourselves. And when that identifier resembles that of a company, a bank or an institution, the line between a legitimate identity and a fake one may be less obvious to some users.
The first alert. TechCrunch put the system to the test at an early stage and found several usernames available reminiscent of Indian figures, companies and institutions. Among the examples he cited “indiamodi”, “shahrukh.actor”, “teamamitabh” and “rbi_verify”, references to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bollywood actors and the Indian central bank. The nuance is important: the outlet did not claim that these identifiers were already being used to scam, but rather that they appeared available for reservation and, therefore, raised a reasonable doubt about the scope of the preventive reservations announced by Meta.
The Binance case. The conversation took a step further when another user showed on X that “cz_binance” appeared as unavailable when trying to reserve it on WhatsApp. Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, He then responded that he had tried it too. and that he had not been able to do it: “I tried, I couldn’t reserve that name. So, it definitely wasn’t me.” His comment clears up only one mystery: it was not he who booked it. Everything else, from a possible preventive reservation of Meta to any other internal criteria, remains unconfirmed.
India asks to stop deployment. Doubts about the new function took a step further when they arrived at the offices of the Indian Government. In a notification sent Regarding WhatsApp, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology maintained that usernames could facilitate the impersonation of citizens, public organizations, financial entities and government agencies. For this reason, it asked WhatsApp to justify the function and demanded that its deployment in India, the application’s largest market, be paused while consultations with the authorities continued.
Meta’s response. Faced with the doubts raised in recent days, the company defends that the system incorporates measures to limit the risk of identity theft. These include the preventive reservation of names of public figures, governments and certain variants, in addition to the possibility for creators, companies and organizations to claim the same username on WhatsApp that they already use on Instagram or Facebook.
It’s not a new idea. The discussion about usernames didn’t start with WhatsApp either. Telegram and Signal already allow you to contact other users using identifiers without sharing that input data, while WeChat combines formulas such as your own ID and QR codes. What changes now is the scale. If WhatsApp completes the deployment planned for this year, this way of identifying will reach a platform with billions of users, expanding both its advantages and the questions that accompany it.
The underlying problem. There is no reason to think that cybercriminals will ignore WhatsApp usernames. If a new tool can help them appear more credible, it is logical to assume that they will try to take advantage of it, just as they have been taking advantage of for years unknown numbers, profile photos, visible names, company accounts or leaked data. The question, therefore, is not whether there will be attempts at abuse, but to what extent Meta’s measures and user attention will be sufficient to reduce their impact.
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In Xataka | The new WhatsApp usernames have a reason for being. Advertising, specifically
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