WhatsApp is quite literally the biggest instant messaging application in the world, with 2 billion monthly active users. That’s a mind-boggling number of users and needless to say, the team behind the app needs to make sure that the app has features that can make its many users happy.
A new feature is being developed for the app which is the introduction of WhatsApp usernames. The current state of the app makes it such that anyone who wants to message you needs to have your phone number, and this will make it possible to share your WhatsApp contact without needing to share your phone number.
WhatsApp Is Set On Introducing A Username Feature To Publicly Take The Place Of Your Phone Number
With the way that WhatsApp is currently set up, your phone number is the sole unique identifier of your account. If anyone wants to message you, they’ll need to have your phone number. At the same time, if you message somebody, they’ll instantly be able to see your number too. In fact, you might not even need to message someone before they can access your phone number, as long as you’re in the same group as one another.
Quite obviously, this presents a lot of privacy concerns because your phone number follows you even without your WhatsApp account in the picture. This seems to be the reason why WhatsApp has chosen to introduce a username system, and if you ask me, it’s a much-needed addition (more so than Meta AI at least). This is different from your display name which is a non-unique identifier.
This username will be a unique identifier linked to your account and it’ll be possible for people to message you using your username instead of your phone number. You’ll be able to make your username the only public identifier for your account. Telegram, another popular messaging app, already has a similar system in place, and I personally think it works great there so I have no doubts about its implementation on WhatsApp.
A PIN System Could Prevent Unknown People With Your Username From Messaging You
However, there is one problem that arises from this. It means that you’ll be able to search for usernames and message anyone as long as you have their username. In fact, you’d even be able to guess a username and just decide to message that person. The people behind spam messages are quite eagerly licking their lips at the possibility of doing that.
Thankfully, courtesy of WABetaInfo, it seems like the folks at WhatsApp have thought of this and have introduced PINs alongside the new username mechanism. Using a PIN will essentially allow you to set a secret code that you give someone alongside your username. If they don’t have the PIN, they simply won’t be able to contact you for the first time.
Of course, the PIN will only come into play the very first time that someone tries to contact you, and once you’ve established a conversation with them, the PIN won’t be necessary for subsequent attempts. At the moment, these features are currently in the beta version only, but they should hit a wider release soon.
