Netflix Password Sharing—How New Crackdown Is Being Enforced

The Netflix password-sharing crackdown is underway, with the streaming service introducing its new measures across the world.

In the U.S., families are resorting to removing adult children from their Netflix accounts to avoid extra charges. An article in the Wall Street Journal describes how a father sent a text message to his grown-up daughter and her siblings to let them know he was removing them from his Netflix plan.

If you do still share Netflix passwords after the ban, the streaming service has apparently made things as difficult as possible. An article in BGR details how the main Netflix account holder will be “bombarded with emails” asking them to verify the household each time a new person uses the service.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper tells a similar story. Netflix sent an email to someone sharing their password with their sister-in-law saying: “Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with—your household.”

The email then offered him the option of paying £4.99 ($6.29) a month for an additional account.

It turned out that Netflix was sending emails to account holders when someone logged into their account on a smart TV or connected device such as Amazon’s Fire Stick. However, the Guardian also noticed that students watching Netflix on their laptops or mobile devices away from home were not triggering the alerts.

Netflix told the Guardian that a household is “a collection of the devices connected to the internet at the main place you watch Netflix.”

The streaming platform does allow additional accounts to be connected to Netflix—for kids at college, for example, if you periodically log in from home.

Even so, lots of people are unhappy about the crackdown—especially those who have kids who are not able to check in from home.

Netflix’s Password Sharing Crackdown Is Working

As I wrote earlier this month, the Netflix password sharing crackdown does seem to be working.

While some people have been cancelling their Netflix accounts altogether, data on Netflix subscribers from research company Antenna reported that it had its biggest growth in sign-ups since January 2019, after first notifying U.S. users on May 23 that password sharing would end. The research showed new user numbers per day surged to 73,000 between May 25 and 28—a 102% increase.

However, a recent U.K. survey on the Broadband Genie price comparison site showed that a quarter of users wanted to cancel their Netflix account or downgrade their package following the crackdown.

In the U.S., the U.K. and several other markets, the streaming giant added an option called “buy an extra member,” costing $7.99 for folks in the U.S. and £4.99 for U.K. users. The other, less attractive option is for password sharers to buy a full-price Netflix account offered at several different price points, including an ad-supported tier.

There’s no doubt that Netflix will continue to enforce its crackdown, and the streaming giant has the data to do so. As the first of latest Black Mirror episodes streaming on Netflix highlights, the firm collects vast amounts of data about its users. This information will include your location and devices linked to the Netflix account, which makes it easy for the streaming giant to work out where people are watching its shows.