Home > News

Netflix Enforces Password Sharing Rules in US and UK

By Charlie Fripp
Netflix Featured

Over the last few months, there have been rumblings and speculation about global streaming giant Netflix and when it would clamp down on U.S. users sharing passwords. Earlier this year, several countries in Latin America and Spain encountered the roadblock, noticing additional charges for the transgression. However, with very little fanfare, it seems that the tight restrictions are now targeting American and British Netflix users who participating in password sharing.

In the know: learn how Netflix lost a million subscribers over its password policing in Spain.

A Crack in the Stream

Netflix has been warning subscribers for some time that password sharing is against the streaming service’s terms and conditions. Initially, it turned a blind eye, then more recently, it announced plans to tackle the problem, starting with a trial run in several Latin American countries.

When Netflix detected logins that weren’t part of the household, it charged the account holder an additional $6 on top of the regular monthly fee. In some cases, this almost doubled the monthly subscription fee, leading many to cancel their service. Netflix’s actions were mostly contained to Latin America and a few other European countries. But in a recent business update, the changes are already activated in the U.K. and U.S. markets.

Netflix
Image source: Pexels

“Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with – your household,” opens the stern email sent to identified password sharers. The email explains what subscribers can do to fix the situation, which includes transferring a profile or paying the additional $7.99 fee.

“Starting today, we will be sending this email to members who are sharing Netflix outside their household in the United States. A Netflix account is for use by one household,” reads a Netflix press release. A similar email was sent to U.K. subscribers.

There is a caveat, though. At the bottom of the email, in a tiny font, it explains that “Extra Member (is) currently unavailable for members billed through our partners.” That means you can’t do that if you pay for your Netflix subscription through a third-party, such as a streaming device or as part of an entertainment bundle.

Tip: read on for more information about Netflix cracking down on password sharing.

Image credit: Pexels

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Charlie Fripp Avatar
Charlie Fripp
Charlie Fripp is a technology writer with a strong focus on consumer gadgets, video games, and cyber security. He holds an undergraduate degree in professional journalism and has worked as a journalist for over 15 years. In his spare time, he enjoys playing various musical instruments and gardening.

Read next

Octopuses possess roughly 500 million neurons distributed across their body, with two-thirds located in their arms rather than their central brain, meaning each arm can taste, problem-solve, and react to stimuli independently of whatever the octopus is otherwise paying attention to.
Explore the historic Roman bridge in lush Salamanca, Spain captured beautifully in daylight.
The Roman aqueduct at Segovia, built around the first century AD without mortar, still carried water into the 1970s, its 167 granite arches held together by nothing but the precise weight distribution of stones cut to fit each other within fractions of a millimeter.
When the SS Great Eastern laid the first working transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866, a message that had taken ten days by steamship suddenly crossed the ocean in minutes, and the financial markets of London and New York were forced, within a single trading week, to invent the modern concept of synchronised global price.
From below of blue starry sky over radio telescope and trees with leaves
The Big Ear telescope was scanning at 1420.4056 megahertz on the night of 15 August 1977, the exact frequency at which hydrogen atoms vibrate across the universe, because Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison had argued years earlier that any species trying to be found would broadcast on that channel — and then, for 72 seconds, something did.
In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.
When Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky pointed a rotating antenna at the sky in 1932 looking for sources of transatlantic radio static, he kept picking up a faint hiss that peaked every 23 hours and 56 minutes, and he eventually realized he had become the first human to hear the center of the Milky Way.