WhatsApp user accounts were always associated with the user’s phone number. And it is undeniable that this system is very practical for making contact through the service with people we already know because we have their phone number and/or they have ours. So setting up a new account is as simple a process as installing an app that will give it access to our contact list, and that’s it.

However, this method is much less practical in other circumstances, and there can be many reasons why we want to communicate with a person via an instant messaging service, but We don’t want to share our phone number with her. And of course, that’s something that many services designed to try to take some of the large market share it has from WhatsApp have taken advantage of it since its inception.

Meta has been aware of this for some time This presents a disadvantage in terms of competitiveness with its competitors. and as a result, we’ve known for some time that they’ve been working on it. However, there have been several instances where rumors spread that the rollout of this feature in WhatsApp was imminent but never materialized, which makes us wonder about the reasons behind the delay.

Well, now we’re reading it at WABetaInfo WhatsApp is testing the use of a PIN code associated with the username, so that only those who know it can start a conversation. That way, even if a person knows another person’s username, they’ll still need that person to have previously provided said code. Since preferences in this regard differ among individual users, its use will of course be optional, as we read in the mentioned publication.

The problem of privacy, as well as the use of this type of service for commercial purposes, etc platform to try to do all types of fraudforces those responsible to try to minimize the amount of unwanted communication that the user may encounter. The problem, of course, is that the more measures along these lines, the more “complicated” the initial contact process becomes, so tech companies, in this case Meta, have to find a complicated balance that they are most comfortable with.