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WhatsApp may soon let you create a username, and hide your phone number

Shortly after bringing its popular messaging app for iPad, WhatsApp Messenger is said to be working on a new feature that is likely to be appreciated by users. You may soon be able to create a username and share it with others, instead of giving them your phone number.

Username sharing is already available in many messaging services, including Signal and Telegram. Nevertheless, this is a welcome move from WhatsApp. Users will be able to choose a unique username for their account. There are quite a few rules about creating a username, it only supports lowercase letters. You need to include at least one letter for your username, and it should contain at least 3 characters, but cannot exceed 30. WhatsApp will allow users to add numbers, periods and underscores to their username. However, usernames are not allowed to start with a period, you cannot use two periods in a row either. These requirements are in place to ensure readability.

And to prevent users from scams and fake news, WhatsApp will not allow usernames to start with a "www.", as it could be misused to represent official websites and businesses. Similarly, usernames are not allowed to end with domains like .com or .net. These are some pretty strict rules, but it is understandable since WhatsApp has become the go-to messaging app in many Countries around the World, and widely used by businesses.

Notable WhatsApp feature observer, WABetaInfo reports (via Digital Trends) that the code for creating usernames in the app was added to a recent beta version for iOS. The version in question was released to TestFlight a couple of days ago. Once the feature is available for the stable version, users can enable it to protect their phone number from being visible to users who are not in your contacts in group chats and personal chats.

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