The glory days of sharing your Netflix password with friends far and wide may be finally coming to an end.
Studies have shown that potentially up to 35% of Netflix account passwords are shared with someone outside of the primary account holders home. Chief Product Officer Greg Peters spoke on the topic in Oct. 2019 saying, “We continue to monitor it. So we’re looking at the situation (and look into) consumer friendly ways to push on the edges.” The company has not made any big moves towards stopping the issue, but that may no longer be the policy.
According to a report from The Streamable, the message says “Start your own Netflix for free today. If you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching.” There are then options to be sent a code to verify it’s your account.
For now this remains a test and is only happening to a small number of accounts. Netflix tests numerous new features every year with only a small selection of them ever being fully rolled out to its userbase.
There are a lot of questions as to how this works for now. If it makes the decision based on your location, there comes a question of logging in with your own device you may travel with or via a television in a hotel while another family member is at home. Or say a child that is away from home in college, but still is technically a member of the household.
While it’s understandable why Netflix would want to crackdown on password sharing, it may also present a lot of questions as well.
For the time being, continue as you do, but don’t be surprised if things change in the near future.
