WhatsApp has started asking users in India to put a date of birth on their profile, a prompt that carries a line saying "upcoming laws in India require us to ask for your age." Users have been posting screenshots of it on X, and Inc42 reported that only a limited set of users received the prompt, as part of an ongoing test. The Meta-owned platform said it is testing ways for people in India to confirm their age as it prepares for the country's Digital Personal Data Protection Act.
A date of birth typed into a box verifies nothing.
Anyone can enter any year, including the fifteen-year-old the law was written about, so the prompt in its current form cannot carry the weight of what arrives on May 13, 2027. That is when the rules on children's data take effect. They require a platform to obtain verifiable consent from a parent or lawful guardian before any personal data of a child is processed, and to adopt technical and organizational measures making sure that consent is real.
A child is anyone under 18. The same regime bars tracking and behavioral monitoring of children, and bars targeted advertising directed at them, and every one of those duties turns on knowing which users are children. Failing them can cost a company up to ₹200 crore, which is two billion rupees or $21M.
"To comply with upcoming laws in India like the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, we are testing privacy-protective ways for people to confirm their age," a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
The company said the test is optional, that nobody has to confirm an age to keep using the app, and that age information will stay private and will not be shared with others on the platform. Others on the platform were never the concern, and that promise covers only what your contacts can see. It says nothing about what Meta holds, which is now a claim about your age fixed to your account. The government is a separate question. Under Rule 23 of the DPDP Rules, it can require a data fiduciary to hand over personal data for reasons touching India's sovereignty, integrity or security, or to carry out legal functions.
Inc42 reported that the Act does not require users to verify their age or force minors to disclose it. The duty falls on the platform, which must do enough due diligence to establish a user's age and the authority of whoever is consenting. Rule 10 names three routes - reliable information the platform already holds, identity or age details volunteered by the parent, or a token or credential issued by the government or an authorized entity. A birthday typed in by the user is none of them.
WhatsApp told The420 the exercise is entirely voluntary and does not alter the core user interface or daily messaging. What changes is the account. It now carries a claim about how old you are. By May 2027, that claim has to come through one of Rule 10's three routes, none of which is a year entered by the person whose age is in question.
And what happens to the accounts of the people who never fill it in? Whether the box becomes mandatory is not something the company has said. Separately, Inc42 reported that several users found their accounts placed under review without prior notice, and some said the suspension disrupted their work. WhatsApp said those accounts were mistakenly placed under review as part of its work to curb abuse on the platform, and that it is working to restore them quickly. Inc42 treated the two as unrelated.
India's IT Secretary is unsure why WhatsApp is asking. S Krishnan said the prompts might come from the DPDP Act, and that the government would have to go back to the company. "But we will have to check with them... because we are approaching the deadline...," Krishnan said. The420 reported that the government will seek further technical clarifications from WhatsApp about its verification methods. This particular box came from the company, not from government instruction.
The obligation is written around children, but the machinery to satisfy it reaches everybody, because a service cannot work out which of its users is 14 without asking all of them how old they are. WhatsApp has about 50 crore users in India, roughly half a billion people. The Tribune reported that platforms may start collecting this information early so their systems are ready and verified by the time enforcement begins.
There are lighter designs available. A researcher at Algoritha Security, quoted by The420 and not named there, said verification should be engineered to minimize collection of sensitive personal information. The420 listed zero-knowledge proofs, virtual tokens and privacy-preserving age-assurance technologies as ways to confirm eligibility without accumulating data that later becomes a target for breaches. Meta has announced none of that. It has announced a box for your birthday.
The government is pushing the same way on the same app. It issued WhatsApp a notice over the proposed username feature, which would let people talk without handing over phone numbers, and told the platform not to launch it until consultations finish to the government's satisfaction.
Authorities warned that handle-based communication without adequate identity verification could enable impersonation scams, phishing and digital arrest frauds. Both demands lead one way, one fixing an age claim to the account, the other blocking the feature that would have let people talk without giving out a phone number. WhatsApp agreed to hold the feature back.
Krishnan said the issue extends beyond WhatsApp, to all messaging apps. Asked whether the ministry is weighing a common set of standards for all of them, he said, "We are looking at what they had to say, the feedback that they've given, and we will take a final call." The IT ministry sent notices to Telegram and Signal, asking how their existing username features address the same concerns.
