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Before the crackdown, Netflix said it needed to take a tough stance on password-sharing as it said members sharing accounts were weakening its ability to be one of the best streaming services out there. So with the extra revenue it's getting the service must be better than ever right? Well no; Netflix raised prices yet again and admitted it makes too many bad movies.
If you've been sharing your Netflix account this guide will be a handy tool for deciphering how Netflix will enforce its rules, and what your options are if you're looking to keep sharing your account with a friend or family member.
If you're in one of those regions and have a profile (or profiles) on your Netflix account for someone who's outside of your household, there's a good chance that you've already received an email telling you about your options.
Now, the 'Sharing your Netflix account' section of Netflix's Help Center simply explains the rules. It says that "a Netflix account is meant to be shared by people living together in one household", with a household defined as "a collection of the devices connected to the internet at the main place you watch Netflix".
People outside that household will need to sign up for their own account to watch, or buy an 'extra member' slot for your account. By hiding its precise methods for detecting password-sharing, Netflix can alter its methods to prevent them from being circumvented.
As you can see, that's nearly the cost of a basic Netflix plan on its own. And that price is per person, so if you want to add two people to a Netflix Premium account you'll have to double the amounts above.
Exactly how it will do this is unclear, though it has previously outlined plans to use its email/phone verification method to grant access, and also a limited-use code that lets you access the service for seven days.
If you're planning to leave Netflix when password-sharing restrictions are brought in then here are the best Netflix movies you need to watch before you unsubscribe. And if you're thinking about joining one of its rivals then here are the best Disney Plus shows, and the best Prime Video movies that you might want to check out.
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:
Begin the process by hitting the Start Profile Transfer button; you'll then be asked whether you want to move your profile to a new account or an existing account. Make your selection then hit Next again.
If you're creating a new account, you'll then enter the credentials for your new account. Verify your email and then follow the prompts you see on the screen to finish setting up your new account. Once this is finished, your profile will be transferred and you'll have instant access to your new Netflix account.
NBCUniversal which owns Peacock says it has no immediate plans to make changes to its password-sharing policy. Peacock like other streaming services only allows members of the same household to share accounts but it does not enforce the rule.
Erickson says the news was not a surprise. Disney, like other streaming services, is under growing pressure to boost profitability as subscription growth slows, consumers become more conservative in their spending and the economy shows signs of slowing.
Netflix was the first to rein in the runaway practice. The streaming company has long been aware that its subscribers share passwords and once upon a time encouraged it. But a year-over-year decline in subscribers convinced Netflix to crack down on the 100 million households that were streaming without paying.
Despite fears the crackdown would drive away subscribers, Netflix says it has succeeded in converting nonpaying users into subscribers. It added 5.9 million new subscribers in the most recent quarter, nearly three times as many as analysts expected.
Being forgiving with password sharing is an easy and cost-effective way to generate grassroots interest in a young, growing service. That's not the reality for leading streamers, who all need to show a path to profitability. Expect them to seek that path through a mix of price increases, advertising revenues, password sharing crackdowns, and content cuts," Jennifer Kent, vice president of research with Parks Associates, said in an email.
According to Parks Associates, most streaming subscribers share their account credentials with friends and family. For example, half of Paramount+ subscribers do it and 62% of ESPN+ subscribers do it.
There are situations that are more likely than not to be actual violations, such as consistent log-ins to the same account during prime time at several repeating geographic locations within the same city, or daily simultaneous use in different countries or continents. There may exist isolated cases of legitimate use even within these occurrences, but they are hard to imagine and would certainly be in the minority.
Unsupervised learning allows for users with similar viewing habits to be classified into clusters without having to identify those habits in advance. In the example below, 15,100 internet users are grouped into five clusters using 51 usage metrics. As can be seen in Figure 1, not all clusters contain the same number of users. In fact, Clusters 2, 3 and 5 contain only 25 users between them. If this were my data set, I would take a closer look at these clusters to try to understand how they differ from the remaining 15,075 people.
That information may be found in the parallel cord plot below in Figure 2, where each line represents a cluster. Looking at the leftmost extreme of the plot, it seems the three users in Cluster 5, on average, had a larger tot_HO (total hours online) than the users in any of the other clusters, on average. This may be one of the metrics that distinguishes this cluster from the others. There are others as well, as indicated in the portions of the plot where the lines deviate.
The next step would be to consider these differences and think logically about which clusters are composed of users who are most likely violating their service agreements. The nice thing about JMP is that initially, if nothing concrete emerges, the platforms are designed to let analysts keep exploring the data until something meaningful pops out at them. Once that happens, they'll have a good idea of the accounts to target the warnings.
From there, a streaming platform like Netflix could monitor these accounts to find out whether there are differences in their usage habits. Doing so might indicate that some of the accounts had multiple households sharing passwords, and the warnings were heeded. A clear outcome would be to do this as a test in a localized region and see if there is a spike in subscriptions in the days or weeks that followed.
Perhaps streaming companies have ways of monetizing viewership apart from the subscription fees, such as product placement, and would rather err on the side of more viewers rather than fewer. Of course, how many viewers gained versus subscription fees lost would be the type of information needed before making those decisions. JMP can be used at every step of this process. Our software enables domain experts to wade through large and complex data sets until insights emerge that only they, being experts, can understand. It further allows those experts to distill the insights and present them in a way that is easily digested by stakeholders, thus ensuring any resulting actions align with the strategic needs of the business.
It'll be interesting to see what actions the various streaming services take to address this issue moving forward. One thing is certain: They, like many other organizations, will have leveraged the power of analytics to inform and augment the decisions driving them.
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.
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