A long time ago, Netflix used to say that “love is sharing a password,” but that era seems to have passed. The streaming is now expanding its crackdown on password sharing worldwide, including 9 European countries: France, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
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Starting Tuesday, Netflix users who do not live in the same household and share account will receive an email informing them that the company is banning this practice from now on.
“Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with — your household,” the company said in a statement . Netflix will use information like IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity to make sure the devices connected to your Netflix account are valid and belong to your household.
The service offers two options for individual households that want to use it. The first is to transfer a profile to a new paid subscription. The second is to purchase an additional member to continue using the same account — with different prices per country. For example, the price is €3.99 per month in Belgium and the Netherlands, €5.99 in France , and £4.99 in the UK.
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Netflix is expanding its crackdown on password sharing to more than 100 countries around the world, following the implementation of new measures in Portugal, Canada, New Zealand and Spain.
The company is losing subscribers in the first quarter of 2023 and is overseeing an ad-supported subscription to improve its growth in the second half of the same year.
But if it tries to turn shared passwords into active subscribers, it could backfire. A recent study by consumer research group Kantar found that Netflix's new policy caused a loss of one million subscribers in Spain in the first quarter of 2023 alone. That means about 15% of users will drop.
It remains to be seen how the ban on password sharing will be implemented in the newly added countries.
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Sharing passwords can put account holders at risk of identity theft. When an account is shared, you give others access to your personal information, preferences, and viewing history. One-click access to sensitive data could lead to the exposure of personal and financial data, allowing hackers to use that information to commit fraud or steal identities.
