For years, India has lived with a quiet, familiar tribe: the Wi-Fi WhatsApp user. The teenager glued to a hand-me-down phone with no balance and no SIM, but reliable home Wi-Fi.The NRI who keeps an India number alive only inside WhatsApp, the small shopkeeper taking orders on a spare handset that never makes a call. The journalist who installs WhatsApp on every spare device, just to keep work and life from colliding on a single screen.
From November 28, 2025, that user and the habit they embodied is effectively gone.
A new set of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) rules, issued without the usual build-up of public debate and enforced with immediate effect, has made it illegal for WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and similar apps to run on any device that does not contain the active SIM card linked to the account. In simple terms, if the SIM isn’t inside the phone, the app won’t work. The era of multi-device hopping is over.
India has just legislated digital monogamy.
A cultural habit, abruptly discontinued
For a country where WhatsApp has long functioned more like infrastructure than an app, the rule marks a rare, sudden reversal in daily digital behaviour.
Over time, Indians moulded WhatsApp to suit their lives, not their hardware. Old devices became WhatsApp-only machines. Tablets turned into message boards.
That loophole is what the government now calls a “cybersecurity challenge.”
The Telecommunication Cybersecurity Amendment Rules, 2025, classify WhatsApp and similar platforms as Telecommunication Identifier User Entities (TIUEs) — essentially treating them like telecom operators without the towers.
And like telecom operators, they must now keep users continuously tethered to the SIM card.
The directive gives apps just 90 days to comply.
Web versions must forcibly log users out every six hours. Re-authentication will require the familiar QR scan. Compliance reports must reach the DoT within 120 days.
What was once habit — WhatsApp running on any screen with Wi-Fi — will now be a technical impossibility.
The government’s message is simple: no SIM, no WhatsApp
The DoT says scammers, especially those operating from abroad, have been exploiting this independence between app and SIM. In many cases, fraudsters reportedly used WhatsApp numbers from disconnected Indian SIMs — numbers that still worked online but no longer existed on any device.
The government believes persistent SIM checks will “safeguard the integrity and security of the telecom ecosystem.” Discussions with major platforms had been on for months.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) backs the move, saying the mobile number is India’s “most updated and monitored identity,” and the government is trying to “close a misuse window.”
In spirit, this new rule is not about convenience; it is about traceability.
The end of the spare phone era
The fallout, however, will be felt far beyond fraud control.
Parents who gave kids older phones to chat with cousins over Wi-Fi will now have to buy active SIMs. Travellers who kept Indian WhatsApp numbers alive from abroad may lose access unless they physically insert the SIM again.
People who used WhatsApp Web as a permanent fixture at work will now be logged out twice during a shift. Low-income households using second devices for messaging, particularly in rural areas, could be forced offline.
WhatsApp might still be the country’s default communication pipeline, but the way people access it has been forcibly reshaped. India’s digital ecosystem, once so flexible that a smartphone could live several lives, has been nudged towards rigidity.