Whatsapp announces the arrival of usernames and aliases. They can be reserved progressively

While other competing services such as Telegram have had it for years, WhatsApp still did not have the option to assign an alias or username, using the phone number as a way to contact people, with the privacy issues that raises.

The Meta messaging application has now officially announced the arrival of the aliases or usernames, a function that works identically to the one that rivals such as the aforementioned Telegram or Signal have been using for years, and that will allow you to communicate with strangers or companies without the obligation to reveal the private telephone number.

WhatsApp now allows the reservation of aliases or usernames in some countries

Although the final launch of the function will occur in the coming months, WhatsApp has opened the process to reserve aliases in different countries this week. We must not forget that the application has a base that already exceeds 3,000 million global users and that registering millions of aliases at the same time could be quite a challenge.

The reservation process will be progressively enabled worldwide, and the application itself will send a notification to the phone when it is available in each country. Once the notice arrives, all you have to do is access the account settings section to save the chosen alias, which must be between 3 and 35 characters. If we don’t want to put any, the app will show us a random one.

The company will save the aliases of major celebrities, VIPs and global organizations so that no one steals them. For its part, if a business or content creator wants to maintain some uniformity between their internet profiles, the application will allow them to claim exactly the same name that they already use on Instagram or Facebook.

Additionally, Meta has integrated an additional layer of security to prevent spam. Users will be able to set up a username key, which will function as a four-digit PIN during the booking phase and will change to an alphanumeric code later. If someone tries to write for the first time using the alias, they will not be able to send the message unless they also enter that secret key.

In any case, the telephone number will continue to be a mandatory requirement to create an account in the application. However, contacts can be added by alias.