Netflix Will Now Charge More If You Share Your Password With Others
While we may all joke about it, there are many of us here in Australia who definitely go against Netflix’s terms and conditions, and happily share our account details with people
who live outside of our household.
However, the streaming giant is now starting to crack down on this rule, according to Variety. Director of product innovation at Netflix, Chengyi Long announced that Netflix is launching a ‘test’ in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru where Netflix users will only be able to share their account with people outside their household if they pay “a bit more”.
“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans.
While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households – impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”
The ‘test’, which will run in the three countries over the next few weeks, will allow current Netflix users to add up to two people they don’t live with for an extra $2.99USD per month and those two people will get their own profile, personalised recommendations, login and password.
What’s unclear is how Netflix will track who’s using the account and where they live – and whether this is an invasion of privacy… Many Netflix users watch Netflix while commuting to and from work, so surely the streaming platform will still allow people to use their account when they’re not at home; but again, it is slightly alarming if Netflix can tell exactly where we are while using their app.
This ‘test’, at this stage, is just that: a test. Meaning that Netflix may not permanently crackdown on users sharing their account with members of other households and Netflix may not include this feature in other countries, like Australia… But they also could.
“We’ll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world.”
Here’s hoping they don’t…
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