{"id":1018929,"date":"2026-07-04T08:55:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T03:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1018929"},"modified":"2026-07-04T09:22:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T03:52:22","slug":"username-feature-can-fuel-cybercrime-impersonation-it-secretary-on-notices-to-whatsapp-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/07\/04\/username-feature-can-fuel-cybercrime-impersonation-it-secretary-on-notices-to-whatsapp-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Username feature can fuel cybercrime, impersonation: IT Secretary on notices to WhatsApp, others"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Centre has sought explanations from WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal over their username feature, with IT Secretary S Krishnan on Friday warning that it poses a &#8220;serious&#8221; risk of impersonation and cybercrime. The government has asked the platforms to justify the feature, which allows users to communicate without sharing their phone numbers. <\/p>\n<p>The government&#8217;s concerns come days after Meta-owned WhatsApp announced plans to roll out the username feature in India. The Centre subsequently served a notice asking why action should not be initiated under the IT Act and related rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Centre has sought explanations from WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal over their username feature, with IT Secretary S Krishnan on Friday warning that it poses a &#8220;serious&#8221; risk of impersonation and cybercrime. The government has asked the platforms to justify the feature, which allows users to communicate without sharing their phone numbers. The government&#8217;s concerns come days after Meta-owned WhatsApp announced plans to roll out the username feature in India. The Centre subsequently served a notice asking why action should not be initiated under the IT Act and related rules.<\/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-1018929","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\/1018929","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=1018929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018948,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018929\/revisions\/1018948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}