Netflix Knows You’re Sharing Passwords And They’re Cracking Down
This week, a Netflix exec said that they’re “monitoring” accounts they believe are being shared. They’ll also be looking into “consumer-friendly ways” to prevent it from happening.
It’s unclear what that means, but it might just mean that they’re weighing whether it’s even worth inconveniencing paying customers by trying to chase down people who are trying to beat the system.
And maybe they won’t bother.
Netflix already has built-in constraints: Each account can only have one to four simultaneous streams, depending on the plan. For example, the standard $12.99 plan is already capped at two devices watching at once.
So, a dozen college students could be ‘sharing’ a password…for an account that one of their parents is paying for…but there can only be two streams at any time. And Netflix is already getting their $12.99-per-month for that.
Regardless, Netflix says they’re not making any changes yet.
If you’re planning on sharing a Disney+ password when that streaming service goes live in less than a month, it might be more difficult. It’s believed that Disney will have tighter restrictions than Netflix and that Disney is hard at work on ‘piracy mitigation’ and will:
implement business rules and techniques to address such issues as unauthorized access and password sharing.
It’s not known what exactly Disney has in place to prevent password sharing, but that they will be looking to prevent it.
[source: Streamable]
