Netflix is cracking down on password sharing

Hyderabad: We’ve all used somebody else’s Netflix account at least once in our digital lifetime. And we all know someone who is generous enough to share their password with family, friends, friend’s friend and their friends. But sadly, this whole password sharing business will now have to stop. Until a few years back, Netflix encouraged […]

Hyderabad: We’ve all used somebody else’s Netflix account at least once in our digital lifetime. And we all know someone who is generous enough to share their password with family, friends, friend’s friend and their friends. But sadly, this whole password sharing business will now have to stop.

Until a few years back, Netflix encouraged password sharing. It brought in features like creating profiles and sub-accounts. But it looks like the streaming platform’s customers overdid it as the company for the first time in a decade saw a decline in the number of subscribers.

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What’s Netflix’s plan of action? Charge an extra fee for accounts being used by multiple people outside of the home. Meaning, multiple logins from the same geological location, are not likely to be charged an extra fee. But if someone logs in from a different address, that would attract the charges.

Last month, it announced that users in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru will have to pay extra for sharing accounts between households. The same strategy is likely to be applied in other countries soon. Experts say that Netflix will begin with sending alerts to users that are tagged as password abusers.

Chief Operating Officer Greg Peters is reported to have said, “We’re not trying to shut down password sharing, but we’re going to ask you to pay a bit more to be able to share and so that they get the benefit and the value of the service, but we also get the revenue associated with that viewing.”

However, a lot is still to be worked out. The streaming platform is yet to announce how they plan to identify these accounts. And how long will they allow this before blocking the accounts.

What is clear is the straight-cut policy Netflix is looking at, either pay for the extra user or lose the account altogether.

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