WhatsApp is preparing one of the biggest privacy shifts in its history. The Meta-owned messaging app, used by more people than almost any other communication platform on the planet, is rolling out a new system that lets people connect using a chosen username instead of handing over their personal phone number. The change is set to reach all three billion WhatsApp accounts worldwide over the coming months, marking a fundamental shift in how the app has worked since its earliest days.

For more than a decade, your phone number has been the backbone of your WhatsApp identity. It's how people find you, how you're added to groups, and how strangers can reach you if they happen to have your digits. That long-standing model is now changing, and the implications stretch from everyday privacy to business branding to the way scams might evolve on the platform.

What's Changing

The core idea is simple: instead of relying solely on your phone number to be located and contacted, WhatsApp users will soon be able to reserve a unique username, similar in spirit to a handle on Instagram, X, or Signal. That username can be shared in place of a phone number when meeting new people, joining communities, or chatting in groups where you'd rather not expose your private number to everyone present.

The rollout is already underway in stages. Starting this week, users can begin reserving a username through their account or profile settings inside the app. It's worth noting that this option is not yet available through WhatsApp Web or the Desktop app, so for now, claiming a username has to happen on mobile.

Importantly, the feature is not mandatory. People who are happy continuing to be identified by their phone number can simply ignore the new option altogether. For those who do want to set one up, usernames can be changed or removed at any time, giving users ongoing flexibility rather than locking them into a single choice.

In terms of format, usernames can run up to 35 characters long, and WhatsApp has said there will be relatively few restrictions on what people can choose. The one notable exception involves a list of high-profile public figures and officials, whose names will be reserved in advance so that ordinary users can't claim them. In other words, you won't be able to sign up as a well-known politician or celebrity, even as a joke, since those specific names have effectively been locked out of the system from the start.

Why WhatsApp Is Doing This

WhatsApp is framing the change squarely as a privacy upgrade rather than a cosmetic feature. According to the company, the motivation traces back to user feedback, particularly around group chats, where people often felt uncomfortable having their phone number visible to everyone in a conversation, including people they didn't know well or hadn't chosen to share their number with directly.

Alice Newton-Rex, WhatsApp's head of product, has said the company heard repeatedly from users who wanted a way to participate in chats and groups without exposing their number to every other participant. The goal, in her words, is giving people more control over how they present themselves on the platform, rather than being identified solely by a number tied directly to their real-world phone line and, by extension, their identity.

This isn't an entirely new concept in the messaging world. Signal, another major encrypted messaging app known for its strong privacy reputation, introduced a nearly identical username system back in 2024. WhatsApp's move can be seen as catching up to a feature that privacy-focused competitors had already normalized, while also applying it at a vastly larger scale given WhatsApp's enormous global user base.

Linking to Other Meta Accounts

For businesses, creators, and organizations, WhatsApp is offering a convenient shortcut. Rather than starting from scratch, these accounts will be able to claim a username that matches whatever they already use on Instagram or Facebook, helping maintain consistent branding across platforms that many businesses already rely on for marketing and customer engagement.

For everyone else, syncing a WhatsApp username with other Meta-owned platforms isn't automatic. It requires deliberately linking accounts through Meta's Accounts Centre, the centralized hub Meta uses to manage identity and settings across its family of apps. Once that link is made, it does mean a degree of data starts flowing across connected services, including Messenger and Threads, since these platforms share certain account-level information once tied together.

This is worth keeping in mind for anyone who values keeping their various Meta accounts compartmentalized. Choosing not to link a WhatsApp username to Instagram or Facebook avoids this cross-platform data sharing, though it also means missing out on the consistent branding option that linked accounts provide.

Privacy Experts Urge Caution

Not everyone views this update as an unambiguous privacy win, and some experts are encouraging users to keep the bigger picture in mind. Carisa Veliz, a privacy researcher at Oxford University and author of the book Privacy is Power, has welcomed the username feature as a positive step but has also cautioned against assuming WhatsApp is broadly privacy-friendly as a result.

Her concern centers on Meta's wider data practices. Even with usernames replacing visible phone numbers, WhatsApp still collects a significant amount of metadata about its users, information used to support advertising across Meta's broader ecosystem. Veliz has pointed out that Meta, as a company, has one of the more troubled track records in the tech industry when it comes to user privacy more generally, and that a single new feature doesn't erase those broader, longstanding concerns.

It's worth being precise about where WhatsApp's encryption protections actually apply. The app's end-to-end encryption means that the contents of private chats genuinely cannot be read by WhatsApp or Meta, and that message content is not used for advertising purposes. That protection is real and meaningful. However, WhatsApp does still collect and use other signals outside the message content itself, such as a user's general location and basic profile details like age, which feed into advertising elsewhere in Meta's products. Usernames address one specific privacy concern, exposed phone numbers, without changing this broader data collection model.

Will This Open the Door to More Scams?

Replacing phone numbers with usernames raises an obvious and important question: could this development make it easier for scammers and bad actors to reach people on the platform? Phone numbers have historically offered a small layer of friction for scammers, since obtaining someone's actual number requires at least some prior information about them. Usernames, by contrast, could theoretically be guessed, searched for, or shared more casually.

WhatsApp has addressed this concern directly, stating it has multiple layers of defense built into the new system. One specific safeguard is an optional feature called a username key, a short numeric code that can be added on top of a username. With this enabled, someone would need both your username and its accompanying key to actually contact you, adding a second barrier beyond the username alone.

The company has also said its broader systems are built to detect and block recurring patterns of abuse, language that suggests automated monitoring designed to catch coordinated scam attempts or mass messaging abuse before it reaches large numbers of users. Whether these protections prove sufficient in practice will likely become clearer once the feature is fully live and being used at scale by billions of people.

What Stays the Same

Despite the scale of this change, several core aspects of how WhatsApp works will remain untouched. There will be no public directory of usernames, meaning people won't be able to browse or search the platform looking for users by name the way they might search for an account on a social media platform. This is a deliberate design choice intended to limit the risk of usernames being mined or scraped for spam or targeting purposes.

A phone number will still be required to create a WhatsApp account in the first place. The change isn't about removing phone numbers from the system entirely, but rather about making them invisible to other users once the feature is fully active, rather than serving as the primary public identifier they've always been. Existing safety tools, including the ability to block or report unwanted contacts, will continue to function exactly as they do now, regardless of whether someone reaches you via your phone number or your new username.

The minimum age requirement to use WhatsApp also remains unchanged at 13 years old. It's also worth noting that messaging apps, including WhatsApp, are not included in the UK's upcoming social media restrictions for users under 16, a policy set to take effect next year. That distinction places WhatsApp in a different regulatory category than traditional social media platforms, even as it continues to evolve features that resemble those found on social apps.

The Bigger Picture

This rollout doesn't exist in isolation. It arrives alongside a notable leadership change at the very top of WhatsApp. Kunal Shah, the founder of an Indian fintech startup, is set to take over as head of the platform, succeeding Will Cathcart, who is stepping down after seven years leading WhatsApp through a period of significant growth and feature expansion.

A leadership transition of this scale, paired with one of the platform's most significant identity-related updates in years, suggests WhatsApp may be entering a new chapter, one that balances its enormous existing user base with a continued push toward features that prioritize, or at least appear to prioritize, user privacy and control.

For anyone eager to claim their preferred username before the rollout reaches everyone, the process starts in your app's profile settings. Just make sure WhatsApp is fully updated first, since the reservation option is rolling out gradually and, according to the company, hasn't appeared for every user just yet. As with most staged rollouts, patience may be required before the feature becomes visible on every device.