India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding
India's telecom authority DoT mandates permanent SIM binding for messenger services. WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal must comply within 90 days.
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The Indian telecommunications authority, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has instructed eight messenger services to implement a permanent binding to inserted SIM cards. Affected are WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, ShareChat, as well as the Indian services Arattai, JioChat, and Josh. According to the directive, the companies must ensure within 90 days that their services can only be used with a physically inserted SIM card.
The regulation is based on the Telecommunication Cybersecurity Amendment Rules, adopted in October 2025, which introduced a new category of service providers: so-called Telecommunication Identifier User Entities (TIUE). This includes all companies that use phone numbers for user verification. Until now, most messengers continue to function even if the SIM card is removed after verification – a loophole that is now to be closed.
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For web and desktop applications like WhatsApp Web, the directive provides for additional measures: users must be automatically logged out after six hours at the latest and re-authenticate via QR code. The authority justifies the measure with the fight against cybercrime from abroad. Without an active SIM card, authorities lacked connection data, location information, and network operator logs for tracking.
Experts doubt effectiveness
Cybersecurity experts are skeptical whether the measure will actually help. As MediaNama reports, citing an expert, fraudsters simply obtain SIM cards with fake or borrowed IDs. For a hundred victims, fraudsters only needed ten SIM cards.
SIM binding is not new in India; financial apps and payment services already rely on these mechanisms. In February 2025, the Indian stock market regulator SEBI also proposed permanently binding trading accounts to SIM cards, combined with biometric authentication. Whether and how the affected international messenger services will implement the requirements is still open. For travelers to India, the regulation could mean that they will no longer have access to their usual communication apps without a local SIM card.
(mki)
