Over the last few months, rumours have surfaced, gone away, and resurfaced again about Netflix potentially cracking down on those people who are using somebody else’s log in details. Which is, let’s be honest, most of us. We can see why Netflix would want to stop this, as if people in different households are sharing one account on the streaming service, they’re potentially missing out on the money from the two separate accounts.

Are the rumours true?

2 years ago, Netflix told Her that they are not currently working with any companies or plans to prevent this. They went on to say that the accounts are intended for one household, and the prices for each tier of streaming is their way of guarding how many people use one account.

netflix stopping sharing

However, earlier this month, Tech Radar reported that Netflix had indeed been investigating ways of preventing the sharing of accounts. One way that they said the company had looked into were One Time Passcodes sent to the owner of the account. This would, of course, prevent anyone using the account without the bill payer’s knowledge. However, for us students, a text to Mum or Dad is all it would take to get around this method. Despite the warnings of “if you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching”.

The main reason behind doing this is to make sure that everyone using Netflix is authorised to do so – i.e not piggybacking off of their ex from GCSE years. The test is still in process, and is in place in varying degrees in various nations, according to Tech Radar. But apparently we can expect it to roll out globally soon. Not that it’ll cause much of an issue.

Will there be other changes that will stop password sharing?

According to the Netflix CEO, Reed Hasting, no. He was asked about Netflix’s plans and said, “Password sharing is something you have to learn to live with, because there’s so much legitimate password sharing, like you sharing with your spouse, with your kids. So there’s no bright line, and we’re doing fine as is.”

netflix stopping sharing

So not to worry, we haven’t bankrupted Netflix by piggybacking off of mum and dad, and they don’t intend on punishing us for being cheap anytime soon.