{"id":474801,"date":"2022-12-22T07:01:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T05:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=474801"},"modified":"2022-12-22T07:02:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T05:02:51","slug":"netflix-password-sharing-crackdown-starting-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/474801-netflix-password-sharing-crackdown-starting-soon.html","title":{"rendered":"Netflix password sharing crackdown starting soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Netflix will begin cracking down on password sharing from early in 2023, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Citing people familiar with the matter, WSJ reported that changes would roll out gradually, beginning in the United States.<\/p>\n

It reported that Netflix would gradually increase pressure on password sharers to minimise subscriber (and non-subscriber) backlash.<\/p>\n

The company started developing plans to prevent account sharing<\/strong><\/a> in 2019 after it reported a decline in US subscribers in its second quarter.<\/p>\n

However, according to the WSJ, Netflix put the plans on ice in 2020.<\/p>\n

The Covid\u201319 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns caused a surge in new Netflix subscribers that reportedly masked the impact of password sharing on customer growth.<\/p>\n

According to the report, over 100 million Netflix viewers access the service using borrowed passwords.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Netflix\u2019s solution<\/h2>\n

In 2019, Netflix chief product officer Greg Peters said they would look for consumer-friendly ways to tackle account sharing.<\/p>\n

In the past two years, Netflix has developed several features hoping to offer subscribers a better experience than password sharing \u2014 for an additional fee.<\/p>\n

Since March 2022, Netflix has been testing the ability to create sub-accounts<\/strong><\/a> in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Each sub-account gets its own password, avoiding the potential problems of sharing a single password among several users.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In Honduras, Netflix also tested adding a secondary location<\/strong><\/a> for $2.99 (R54) if an account is used outside a primary household for more than two weeks.<\/p>\n

In addition to these paid-for features, Netflix also launched functionality in 2022 that lets users transfer their profiles<\/strong><\/a> from one account to another.<\/p>\n

Profile Transfer allows users to migrate their personalised recommendations, viewing history, saved games, and other settings.<\/p>\n

This could be useful for young adults moving out of their parents\u2019 house for the first time, room-mate arrangements, or break-ups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to offer the ability for borrowers<\/em> to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for sharers<\/em> to manage their devices more easily and to create sub-accounts, if they want to pay for family or friends,\u201d Netflix said in its quarterly results presentation<\/strong><\/a> in October.<\/p>\n

Another new feature launched in November is Managing Access and Devices<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, which lets subscribers remotely log out any user from their account.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s TV.<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: Netflix working on its first PC game<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Netflix will soon bring an end to password sharing on the platform, and has built several new features to try and mitigate backlash from viewers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":466603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[35,2054,61751],"class_list":["post-474801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-headline","tag-netflix","tag-password-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}