WhatsApp has been forced to pause a major update amid fears that it could lead to a massive increase in scams.
The messaging app announced the new feature last week, which allows users to choose a username rather than a phone number to identify themselves.
Regulators have since raised security concerns about the change, with India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ordering WhatsApp to suspend the roll out until an assessment is carried out to determine whether it could increase online fraud and scams.
WhatsApp billed the new feature as a privacy update that would allow people to protect their phone numbers from strangers.
The company claimed that a user’s phone number is “personal [and] tied to so many parts of your life”.
It cited an example of joining a group chat, where people are currently forced to share their phone numbers with people they might not know.
“Usernames are our latest step to make WhatsApp even more private,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the update. “There’s no directory to browse and no suggestions – people will need to know you exact username to contact you for the first time.”
It was set to be introduced to WhatsApp’s 3.3 billion global users in the coming months, though Indian authorities issued a notice blocking the roll out.
India is WhatsApp’s biggest market, with more than 850 million users, though roughly 10 million accounts are banned every month due to policy violations and suspected scam activities.
The government said the new update “may materially increased the incidence of online fraud, phishing, digital arrest scams and impersonation attacks”.
In response, WhatsApp said that users still require a phone number to use the app and that it had systems in place to detect impersonation attempts and scam activity.
“To protect against impersonation, we’ve held the highest-profile names – think public figures, government entities, celebrities, verified Meta accounts – so they can only ever be claimed by their legitimate owners and lookalike derivatives of known names are held as well,” a spokesperson said.
“Users need to know the exact username to message you, we will limit how many new people an account can contact, block repeated attempts to guess someone’s username key, and have systems to detect and remove activity showing common impersonation and abuse patterns.”
