India, July 3 -- The IT Ministry has ordered Meta to halt the rollout of WhatsApp's new usernames feature. But can it be a panacea for rising cyber fraud?

The sequence of events was swift. Meta announced on June 29 that WhatsApp users worldwide, including in India, could start reserving a username, a handle that lets people message without exchanging phone numbers. Within forty-eight hours, India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had sent a notice to Meta's compliance office, ordering the company to halt the rollout, explain itself within three days, and justify why regulatory action should not follow under the IT Act and the 2021 intermediary rules. WhatsApp's response was almost timid: only the reservation option is ...