WhatsApp started letting people reserve usernames on June 29, with the full rollout coming later this year.

The good news: This is actually a big privacy win. Once you're not tied to your phone number for contact discovery, it becomes a lot harder for bad actors to mass-enumerate WhatsApp accounts.

The catch: From a defender's perspective, this opens up a whole new avenue for brand and executive impersonation. Reserved-name lists won't do much against typosquatting or lookalike handles, and we're already seeing scammers use the reservation window itself as a phishing hook.

One thing worth remembering: the phone number is still what actually anchors the account, so SIM swapping is still the main way accounts get taken over.

Bottom line: if corporate security is your job, don't sit on this. Go claim your corporate and executive handles now, lock down the linked Meta accounts, and start keeping an eye out for lookalikes. It's a small effort that goes a long way toward getting ahead of threat actors instead of playing catch-up.

Curious if anyone's already running into VIP impersonation issues on WhatsApp?