India widens its usernames crackdown to Telegram and Signal

This article was published on July 3, 2026 A government source says the IT ministry has sent notices to both apps, a day after ordering WhatsApp to pause its own usernames rollout. India’s technology ministry has sent notices to Telegram and Signal raising concerns over their usernames features, a government source told Reuters, extending a regulatory push that began with WhatsApp just a day earlier. Neither Telegram nor Signal had issued a public response by the time of the report. The source described the notices as asking both companies to explain why they should be allowed to keep letting users message each other via a chosen username rather than a phone number, and how each app guards against the fraud and impersonation risks that come with it. No confirmed deadline for a response has been reported, unlike the three-day window India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology gave WhatsApp in its own notice the day before. That WhatsApp notice, seen directly by Reuters, warned that usernames “may facilitate impersonation and identity spoofing, including impersonation of individuals, public authorities, financial institutions, and government agencies.” The same logic a