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The Union authorities passed directions connected Friday (November 28, 2025) requiring services similar WhatsApp to lone enactment if users person the SIM paper utilized to motion up for the work successful their device, and to log retired web-based chat sessions each six hours. The order, sent straight to messaging platforms similar WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal, represents a large enlargement of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT)’s exercised jurisdiction, gathering connected groundwork laid by a acceptable of contentious cybersecurity guidelines notified this year.
Government officials person expressed vexation implicit their inability to way cyber fraudsters who usage apps similar WhatsApp, which presently lone necessitate users to validate their mobile fig once, earlier being capable to usage the work connected a scope of devices. “SIM binding,” arsenic the directions enactment it, would unit WhatsApp and different messaging platforms to halt moving if the SIM is taken out, and presumably assistance successful the traceability of cyber frauds operating connected WhatsApp — by, successful return, adding imaginable friction to different users. The directions were archetypal reported by tech argumentation quality tract MediaNama.
SIMs utilized extracurricular the telephone wherever WhatsApp has been registered, the DoT said successful its order, were “being misused from extracurricular the state to perpetrate cyber-frauds”. The bid is successful effect from February 2026. The DoT and WhatsApp did not person an contiguous effect to a query by The Hindu sent extracurricular mean moving hours. An manufacture root called the instructions “problematic” and that nary feasibility survey oregon consultation was held earlier these directions were issued, and that it was unclear if these measures would defy circumvention by fraudsters.
The DoT, which typically oversees telcos, has seldom waded beyond “carriage,” oregon the means of transmission, into the “content” furniture of the internet, wherever apps similar WhatsApp arguably operate, with the notable objection of website blocking. One authoritative said that specified divisions had to beryllium perpetually “rethought” successful airy of the “convergence” that the net and telecom ecosystems person seen successful caller years.
Throughout this year, the groundwork for instructions similar this to messaging platforms was laid: the DoT notified amendments to its 2024 Cyber Security Rules, which defined the conception of “Telecommunication Identifier User Entities,” oregon TIUEs. This word could beryllium applied to immoderate steadfast which uses mobile numbers to place users, from e-commerce platforms to messaging apps.
The Internet and Mobile Association of India, which represents Meta and different integer firms, said successful a filing to the DoT this twelvemonth that the amended rules not lone represented a “clear overreach of the delegated legislative powerfulness nether the [2023] Act, but volition besides person wide implications for integer businesses crossed fintech, e-commerce, mobility, societal media, and fundamentally immoderate work that relies connected telecom identifiers”.
The telecom manufacture has repeatedly called connected the DoT to enactment successful this direction, ruling that strict anti-spam regulations that are routinely issued for them bash not curb frauds perpetrated connected platforms similar WhatsApp.
