Back in 2016, Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings once said that password sharing is legitimate–as long as your sharing it with your spouse, kids, or your significant other. There’s no grey line with password sharing, but it seems Netflix is working on restricting password sharing outside of one’s household.
First spotted by Gammawire, select users who have the feature will be brought to a page where they are not authorized to use the account unless they verify it with the owner through E-mail or text. If you cannot verify, the page will prompt you to make your own account.
A Netflix spokesperson confirmed that the said feature is being tested to The Verge. “This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorized to do so.”
While Netflix has reached over 200 million users last month, it is no secret that password sharing is costing them and other streaming services $9 billion in potential revenue. With the experimental feature, Netflix might have a solution to combat streaming piracy and maintain its monentum throughout 2021 and beyond.
However, it has yet to clear on what is the definition of a household account, as its current Terms of Use remains to be vague on this part. One example that blurs the line of a household account include families with children living in different places.
The feature may just be a test for select users, but there’s a chance that Netflix might implement it to all of its plans–including the Mobile and Basic plans that limits you to watching on one screen at a time.
There’s no specifics yet as to which country is covered by this test or how long will the test run, so Netflix might be doing further tweaks to ensure that its users have their accounts safe from unauthorized use.