Tuesday, December 2, 2025
How WhatsApp is evolving privacy from phones to usernames?
If you look back, WhatsApp was really just a chat app that scaled. Without any security measures whatsoever.
Over the years, they have introduced numerous privacy and security features.
- 2016, WhatsApp completed the rollout of end-to-end encryptionfor over a billion users.
Yep this wasn't an actual thing until then.
As WhatsApp accounts became valuable, sim swapping attacks became a common practice among criminals too.
- So in 2017 WhatsApp introduced shipped a two-step verification (2FA)feature.
- This allows users to set a secondary PIN for their account, adding an extra layer of security when registering a phone number on a new device.
- In 2019 in response to people being added to groups without consent (which exposed their phone number to strangers in those groups), WhatsApp added group privacy settings. Users could now control who is allowed to add them to groups.
Around this time, WhatsApp also quietly closed some gaps in how profiles were exposed: for example, it stopped showing profile photos to everyone by default
- 2021 saw multiple privacy-focused changes: Previously, anyone who had your number could see when you were last online by default.
- Finally, in late 2021 WhatsApp gave users the ability to make disappearing messages the default for all new chats (with durations of 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days)
WhatsApp’s first step toward decoupling identity from phone
In 2022, WhatsApp introduced Communities, which are collections of group chats.
Alongside this, WhatsApp began hiding phone numbers by default within large community chats. If you join a community announcement group, your number is hidden from other members who are not your contacts or admins
In mid-2023, WhatsApp introduced an option to silence calls from unknown numbers.
The root of all privacy issues
Because WhatsApp accounts are tied to phone numbers, anyone can input a phone number to see if it’s registered and view any publicly visible profile info.
By 2025, WhatsApp had been actively developing a username feature, signalling one of the most significant shifts in its history.
This feature aims to allow users to contact each other without sharing phone numbers.
Engineers had to redesign large parts of WhatsApp’s infrastructure to support this change
This change is a game-changer for user identity and privacy.
Using your phone number as identifier exposes you account to sim swapping attacks, constant spam and unwanted calls from scammers and SMS
In the future with @usernames as identifiers, WhatsApp users will be able to networking safely and ultimately have stronger business interactions.
Reservation system
How to get in before anyone else? Join the beta for iOS or Android and go to your Profile.
From the there you will be able to see a "Reserve username" button:
