Netflix has an idea to fight account sharing. You will have to come back from vacation after a week

For years, Netflix has quietly allowed users to share accounts with whoever they want. It is true that paying for a subscription together with a friend from another city was against the regulations, but the platform made it clear more than once that it did not intend to worry about it. In recent months, however, Netflix has decided to take the fight against account sharing seriously, and in some markets it is testing new solutions to help with this. Now illegal account sharing is to end once and for all.

Netflix has an idea for location verification. Holidays up to 7 days

Netflix began testing the new solution in Costa Rica, Chile and Peru, where users saw the “primary location” option on their profiles. At the next login, each user will have to assign their account to one Wi-Fi network, which will be the “base” for all viewers.

In this way, Netflix will detect people who use the same account but from different households, and if irregularities are detected, Netflix will block users. To avoid having your entire account banned, each person assigned to the account will be required to log into the underlying Wi-Fi once every 31 days and watch anything on Netflix.

What’s more, the device will then be saved by Netflix as trusted and you won’t have to verify it again for the next month. To use a different one, you will first need to connect the equipment to your home Wi-Fi.

Using the travel platform will also become problematic. Netflix has decided that each of its subscribers will be able to go on vacation, but only for a week. Before leaving, you will need to apply for a temporary code for a given device, which will be able to unlock access to the platform for the next 7 days.

Additional fee and SMS passwords

In addition, Netflix has previously experimented with SMS passwords sent to a number or email address, which will have to be entered within 15 minutes of being generated in order to connect to the account. You may need them to unlock access to the platform for the first time from outside your home or from a new device.

For the three countries mentioned earlier, Netflix has already offered the possibility to connect a user who does not permanently live in the same house with the account holder. Such a person for access to the platform will have to pay an additional $3 (approx. PLN 13) per month for removing the blockade.

For now, Netflix is ​​testing new verification options only in selected markets, and only after some time will it decide whether to introduce these solutions in other countries. It is likely that the American service will eventually deal with account sharing in Poland as well, but the method of such verification remains unknown for the time being.