Netflix will begin cracking down on password sharing from early in 2023, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports.
Citing people familiar with the matter, WSJ reported that changes would roll out gradually, beginning in the United States.
It reported that Netflix would gradually increase pressure on password sharers to minimize subscriber (and non-subscriber) backlash.
The company started developing plans to prevent account sharing in 2019 after it reported a decline in US subscribers in its second quarter.
However, according to the WSJ, Netflix put the plans on ice in 2020. The Covid–19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns caused a surge in new Netflix subscribers that reportedly masked the impact of password sharing on customer growth.
According to the report, over 100 million Netflix viewers access the service using borrowed passwords. A small fraction of these users, typically from impoverished nations, buy stolen passwords or pay for shared accounts specifically set up to split the cost of a single account among several users.
Netflix’s solution
In 2019, Netflix chief product officer Greg Peters said they would look for consumer-friendly ways to tackle account sharing. In the past two years, Netflix has developed several features hoping to offer subscribers a better experience than password sharing — for an additional fee.
Since March 2022, Netflix has been testing the ability to create sub-accounts in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. Customers in these countries could pay an additional fee for an add-on account for family or friends at a fraction of a Netflix Standard subscription.
Each sub-account gets its own password, avoiding the potential problems of sharing a single password among several users. Sub-accounts were priced between 23% and 29% of a Netflix Standard subscription. If that holds in South Africa, it should cost between R37 and R46.
In Honduras, Netflix also tested adding a secondary location for $2.99 (R54) if an account is used outside a primary household for more than two weeks.
In addition to these paid-for features, Netflix also launched a functionality in 2022 that lets users transfer their profiles from one account to another.
Profile Transfer allows users to migrate their personalized recommendations, viewing history, saved games, and other settings. This could be useful for young adults moving out of their parent’s house for the first time, room-mate arrangements, or break-ups.
“We are going to offer the ability for borrowers to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for sharers to manage their devices more easily and to create sub-accounts if they want to pay for family or friends,” Netflix said in its quarterly results presentation in October.
Another new feature launched in November is Managing Access and Devices, which lets subscribers remotely log out any user from their account.
Aside from allowing subscribers to reclaim accounts after sharing passwords in the past, Netflix said the feature could be handy when going on holiday and forgetting to sign out from someone else’s TV.
SOURCE: My broadband
