WhatsApp is changing one of its defining features. For over a decade, reaching someone meant knowing their phone number. Now the Meta-owned platform has begun letting users reserve unique usernames before a wider rollout later this year, when people can choose to be found and contacted only by their handles.
For UK users, that matters. Your mobile number is tied to your bank’s security codes, your accounts and your identity and handing it over just to start a chat has always been a quiet cost of using the app.
What’s changing
You can now create a handle such as @Name123, replacing the need to share a phone number when messaging someone new. This isn’t Instagram, though: there’s no public directory and no autocomplete, so you’ll need to know someone’s exact username to reach them for the first time. Existing chats keep working as normal.
There’s also a second layer, an optional Username Key, an extra code that first-time contacts must enter before they can message you. Think of it as a PIN guarding your handle.
It’s a real improvement. The phone-number requirement has been a genuine weakness — in 2025, researchers retrieved 3.5 billion phone numbers using an easily reproducible method, a flaw first reported back in 2017.
The problem usernames don’t fix
Here’s the catch: hiding your number from other users does nothing about the data WhatsApp collects on you.
Messages are end-to-end encrypted, but the app still collects metadata — who you talk to, when, where, and your device details — and there’s no way to switch that off. A username doesn’t shrink it. Meta still knows it’s you behind the handle, and uses that data to build a profile across its other platforms.
These concerns aren’t new. In 2021, WhatsApp faced a major backlash over a policy update that expanded data-sharing with Meta and made it mandatory — accept it, or stop using the app. Government access is untouched too: in 2024, Meta disclosed data in response to over 78% of law enforcement requests involving WhatsApp.
Worth doing?
Yes — with clear eyes. Reserving a username and turning on the Username Key is a sensible, low-effort win that stops strangers and spammers needing your number. But it protects your number from other people, not your data from Meta. If that’s your real concern, alternatives like Signal collect far less metadata.
Claim your username early, switch on the Username Key, and while you’re in there, enable encrypted backups. Treat it as one useful tool — not the moment WhatsApp finally became private.
