To save money, many people use their streaming services by sharing their accounts with relatives or friends who do not live under the same roof. After all, this is also obvious, since the providers allow the use of the respective platform on different devices, depending on the subscription model.
But it is precisely this sharing of access that is a thorn in the side of market giant Netflix. After a rapid increase, the provider’s user numbers are gradually stagnating. Growing is now becoming increasingly difficult and increasing profits through further price increases is no longer so easy in some countries, even if only from a purely legal point of view.
Netflix has therefore long held the prospect that sooner or later they will want to take action against account sharing in order to boost subscription growth and thus turnover again. And now they seem to be getting started in this regard…
Share Netflix subscription only within your own household
On the officer Netflix Help Center website, where questions about the streaming service are answered, a page has now been set up that defines what is legitimate Netflix account sharing – and what isn’t. At the top of the page it says very tellingly in this context: “A Netflix account is intended for people who live together in one household.” Depending on the subscription level, these individuals can simultaneously access the platform’s content on up to four devices, which must be connected to the same Wi-Fi.
Netflix checks this by reading information such as IP addresses, device IDs and account activity from the various devices logged into the account in question. People living in a different household must use their own account to stream, says the help center. When creating a new account, existing profile data can in any case be taken over.
What threatens when sharing the Netflix account?
The formulation of these restrictions is undoubtedly the first step towards launching Netflix’s offensive against password sharing. However, there are no serious consequences, at least not yetif you don’t follow the guidelines. You will not be charged any additional costs to your own account, nor will your account be blocked.
However, in the future, Netflix may ask to authenticate a device for Netflix use, if it turns out that it is outside the actual account budget and is regularly used there. Such cases are not yet known to us, especially since the addition “possibly” indicates that this will only happen sporadically for the time being.
And even if that were the case, verification can be done quite easily. To do this, Netflix sends the primary account holder’s email address a link to a page containing a four-digit verification code, which must then be entered within 15 minutes on the device where it was requested. So far nothing has been read about the fact that such verification is not possible outside of one’s own household. The only thing to expect here is that a corresponding renewed request may appear at a later date. It should be similar if you want to use Netflix on the go.
Many Netflix users should still be able to use the service as before. However, it is conceivable that Netflix will not only increase the frequency of verification requests in the near future, but also threaten to block accounts in order to actually implement the account policy that has now been formulated. The fact that Netflix will soon fall further behind is also apparent from an earlier version of the aforementioned help center page, which stated that you log in to Netflix at your primary location at least once a month to confirm this regularly. However, this measure has (provisionally) lapsed.
Will there be a new Netflix model?
It’s also somewhat unclear whether creating your own new Netflix account will remain the only method of meeting Netflix guidelines, or whether there will be other, more cost-effective alternatives. For example, a new model was tested in selected countries last year, where for a small additional cost, far below the full subscription price (equal to about two to three euros per person), other people outside their own household can also gain access to an existing Netflix Account can be added.
It remains to be seen whether this option will actually be widely rolled out, but it should only become more relevant if Netflix actually strictly enforces its new requirements. However, the latter should now only be a matter of time.