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Boyan Atanaschev
Whether it's your adult child, your ex-partner or a friend who benefited from your generosity, you may have allowed someone outside your home to continue using your Netflix account at some point. However, since Netflix has confirmed that it will begin charging accounts that share passwords early next year, now might be a good time to make a change.
If that person has their profile on your account, you can transfer it to their new account and delete it from yours. However, if they don't have a profile or simply use your login information to keep watching Netflix without paying, you can kick them off using a new feature in your account settings.
This week, Netflix announced it had launched a new feature in Account Settings called Managing Access and Devices. The purpose of this tool, the company says, is to log yourself out of devices you may have used while traveling, staying in hotels or visiting family and friends. However, it can also be used to boot an unauthorized user from your Netflix account.
To access this feature, sign in to Netflix in a browser on a computer, phone or tablet and select your profile. Then, hover over the downward-facing arrow icon in the upper-right corner and choose Account. Finally, go to the Security & Privacy section on your Account page and choose Manage access and devices. It may have a blue New box on the left side of the text.
You can see all active logins on your Netflix account on this page. Each will display the user, device, date and time and a relative location. Choose Sign Out on any login you want to kick off, and Netflix will remove its access.
Signing out of a session will stop that device from accessing your Netflix account. However, if the person using it knows your login information, they can sign right back in. In this case, you'll still need to change your password.
To reset your password by email or text, go to netflix.com/loginhelp in a browser window. Choose the option you want to use and follow the steps to reset your password. You may need to log back in on the device you used to change the password.
A January 31 story on The Streamable suggested that Netflix users watching from multiple locations would have to ensure that any device used to stream titles from a location other than the primary household would have to log in from the primary household and watch something there at least once every 31 days. 9to5mac quoted similar wording from the FAQ page, including the 31-day stipulation.
As of now, the FAQ page does not mention anything about a 31-day window in which users must log their devices into the primary home network, so the company may have walked back that measure in the short time since announcing it.
Members on a Standard or Premium plan can purchase additional member slots for people outside their household. Standard plan users can add one extra member while Premium users can add two extra members to their plans.
Those additional members get full access to the subscription tier of the primary account holder but get their own unique account and password. Their account is simply paid for directly through the primary account holder.
You might be using a password for your Netflix account that you also use for another service. While that may not be a great practice for security reasons, you might still want to keep your password private while sharing your Netflix account with a family number. You can do so by using a password manager.
Most password managers have a password-sharing feature that lets you share your password in a discreet way with your contacts. As long as the person you want to share your password with also has the same password manager installed, the software will take care of automatically logging in without showing your actual password to another party.
I don't have a Netflix account and never have done. I have a Gmail address which I have never used for public communication. Suddenly I started getting email to this Gmail address from Netflix - not a "Welcome to Netflix" email or one requesting address verification, but what looked like a monthly promo for an existing account. This was addressed to someone with a different real name, with that name not similar in any way to the Gmail name.
After a few of these messages I decided to investigate by going to Netflix and trying to log in with that email address. Using the "forgotten password" option I was able to get a password reset email, change the password and log in. The account appeared to be from Brazil, with some watch history but no other personal details stored and no payment information.
Soon the emails from Netflix started to ask me to update payment information. I didn't, of course, and then they changed to "your account will be suspended" and then "your account has been suspended". The "come back to Netflix" emails are still coming in occasionally.
I don't see how this could possibly be a phishing attempt - I carefully checked that I was on the real Netflix site, used a throwaway password not used on any other sites, and did not enter any of my personal information. I also checked the headers of the emails carefully and they were sent by Netflix. So is this just a mistake on somebody's part, mistyping an email address (although it's surprising that Netflix accepted it with no verification), or something more sinister?
(Note that the above steps don't include any "password reset" step for Jim to access the account; that's because the email from Netflix includes authenticated links that won't ask for it. The attacker wants the victim to click on the email links instead of visiting Netflix manually, this is what enables "Eve" to log back in to the account in step 7. Or, since Netflix emails authenticated links, possibly "Eve" already has one.)
The above situation is partially caused by Netflix (understandably) not recognizing Gmail's "dots don't matter" feature where email sent to [email protected] and to [email protected] end up in the same account. That doesn't really matter in your case (given that if this is how you're trying to be scammed, step 1 was skipped entirely), however.
The most probable situation is that someone used an arbitrary Gmail address (yours) in order to sign up for a free trial, or mistakenly tried to change their email to the wrong address (maybe to have a friend/family also get emails).
This would not be a "hack" or even a phishing attempt, just using any available address. This does mean that your Gmail address could not be used for a free trial at Netflix, so there is that negative impact to you.
As a side note, by logging into someone else's account, you have violated many country's "unauthorised access" laws. I would not make a habit of doing this (or telling others on public sites that you have".
I get dozens to hundreds of e-mails from legitimate companies (car dealers, LA dept of water and power, Macys.com, cell phone activation notes, the payroll company ADP, and Nationwide insurance) from people with my first name and an initial matching my last name.
The worst was in early 2019, when I received medical records (Lab results in a .PDF file) - a clear HIPAA violation, since e-mail isn't an authenticated or encrypted communications channel. The "medical records" person, who should know the law, was the sender of the e-mail.
In my case, none of them are nefarious, but represent clueless users or even worse, clueless sales clerks (such as Lenscrafters in Maryland), the Apple store in Manhattan, and others too numerous to mention.
I got emails from Netflix too saying that my account was cancelled and that there was a sign in attempt somewhere from the US... except that I live in Canada, and have never made a Netflix account in the first place. I went directly to the Netflix website and was able to speak to a representative, and they deleted the account. There was no payment information either. I don't understand why this happened, either someone has a similar email address yet without the dots, or perhaps there is some sinister reason, but I wouldn't know. I've wondered if someone might do this hoping that the other person would fill in their payment information, thus enabling the account.
If you were one of many who lost access to a shared Netflix account this summer, it could be putting a cramp in your streaming. The good news is, even if you got booted off a shared account, you can still transfer your profile over to a new account or another existing account to preserve your recommendations, save lists and other settings.
If you have an older television that doesn't have built-in applications like Hulu, Disney Plus or Netflix, the Fire TV Stick makes it easy and inexpensive to upgrade to a smart TV. The streaming dongle even comes with the Alexa Voice Remote, so you can use your voice to search for and play movies and TV shows across apps.
If you're on a computer, go to the web browser of your choice, access the Netflix website and go into the profile that you want to transfer. Next, hover your cursor over your profile icon in the top right and click Transfer Profile in the dropdown menu. On the next page, click the Allow button.
If you're using a phone or tablet, open the official Netflix application, go into your profile and then tap your profile icon in the top-right corner to access your account settings. Next, tap Account, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and tap Turn on profile transfers. This will redirect you to the official profile transfer page, where you can then hit the Allow button.
You should then get a notification saying that profile transfers will soon be coming to your account. For my account, it said I would get the feature in two days. It also said I could enable the profile transfer feature instantly if I clicked the confirmation link sent to me via email, which I did.
Once the Transfer Profile is enabled, you can transfer your profile to your own new Netflix account or a different existing account. To transfer a profile, log in to your original Netflix account (web or mobile) and go into the Transfer Profile page found in your settings. You should then see the start of the Transfer Profile process, which will give you a brief summary of what the feature does:
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