{"id":1018690,"date":"2026-07-03T09:17:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T03:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1018690"},"modified":"2026-07-03T10:01:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:31:22","slug":"handle-with-care-says-whatsapp-as-india-flags-fraud-risks-in-username-rollout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/07\/03\/handle-with-care-says-whatsapp-as-india-flags-fraud-risks-in-username-rollout\/","title":{"rendered":"Handle with care, says WhatsApp as India flags fraud risks in username rollout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A day after the Indian government asked Meta Platforms to put on hold the rollout of a new WhatsApp feature that would let users create personalised usernames, citing concerns that the tool could be exploited for online fraud, phishing and impersonation, the US company published a \u201cfrequently asked questions\u201d on X, in an attempt to allay user concerns. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust like you can\u2019t search for a phone number in WhatsApp, you can\u2019t search for a username. The best way to prevent someone from contacting you is to add a username key and to choose a username that is unique to WhatsApp,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A day after the Indian government asked Meta Platforms to put on hold the rollout of a new WhatsApp feature that would let users create personalised usernames, citing concerns that the tool could be exploited for online fraud, phishing and impersonation, the US company published a \u201cfrequently asked questions\u201d on X, in an attempt to allay user concerns. \u201cJust like you can\u2019t search for a phone number in WhatsApp, you can\u2019t search for a username. The best way to prevent someone from contacting you is to add a username key and to choose a username that is unique to WhatsApp,\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,85,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","category-telecom-the-telegraph","category-the-telegraph"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018697,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018690\/revisions\/1018697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}