Netflix has been working on methods to prevent different households from sharing their account password since last year and while several ways are being trialed at the moment, the company has not officially revealed which method it will use. However, a report by The Streamable hints at the possible measure that the streaming giant will deploy within the next couple of months.
According to the article, the Netflix Help Center temporarily outlined new rules for using your account outside of your primary household, before the company removed it and said that the rules already in place in some countries were errantly posted. “For a brief time yesterday, a help center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, went live in other countries,” a spokesperson told The Streamable. “We have since updated it.”
For one thing, the new rules stated that each device that is logged into your Netflix account must sign into it using your home Wi-Fi at least once every 31 days, making them “trusted devices”. Users who try to sign into your account from another location outside your home will be blocked and prompted to sign up for their own account, with the option to migrate their recommendations, watch history, and other profile information into a new account through Profile Transfer.
While travelling, the Help Center apparently stated that they can request a temporary code to sign in for seven days in other locations. Netflix will also reportedly use IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity to determine whether a device is signed into your account from your home or from elsewhere.
All these sound quite familiar as the company had been trialling an “Add a Home” feature in Latin countries since July, which prompts users to pay extra to add another location that will be allowed to sign into their account. That being said, the streamer mentioned “extra member accounts” when explaining its password sharing prevention plans in its latest earnings report, indicating it might opt for the experimental Extra Members feature instead.
Netflix has already confirmed that it will be gradually rolling out its anti-password sharing measures in the first quarter of this year, meaning that the latest we’ll see the move is by the end of March. The company estimates that there are over 100 million households globally that are sharing accounts, so it’s not a mystery why the streamer is keen on making these users sign up for their own subscription.
