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The company’s long-anticipated crackdown is being brought to more countries, with a €4.99 monthly charge to have ‘extra members’ on an account.
Streaming giant Netflix has begun the global roll-out of its crackdown on password-sharing, with emails sent to users in multiple countries including Ireland.
It is confirmed that the measures have been extended to Ireland, the UK, the US, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It is also likely these measures will be extended to more countries over the summer.
Netflix users in Ireland will receive an email informing them of the changes. This email explains that a user’s account is for “you and the people you live with – your household”.
If a user currently has extra members on their account, they can “transfer a profile” to a new account. This lets someone who has been sharing an account bring their viewing history to a new account.
Alternatively, the owner of an account can “buy an extra member” for an extra charge of €4.99 a month.
The streaming company has trialled this long-anticipated crackdown in multiple countries already, with launches in Canada, New Zealand, Spain and Portugal earlier this year.
How will this measure be enforced?
Netflix previously said it plans to have users define a “primary location” from their account, such as their home of residence.
Any device that is using this account must then connect to the primary location’s Wi-Fi and watch something at least once every 31 days. Devices that fail to do so will be blocked from accessing the account.
Extra members will still have to create their own account and password to access the main account.
Long-anticipated crackdown
Netflix first revealed its plans to monetise account sharing last year, due to the amount of account passwords being shared across multiple households.
The company has previously estimated that its service is being shared to more than 100m homes that are not directly paying for it, making it “harder to grow membership in many markets”.
The password-sharing crackdown is part of the company’s goal to “reaccelerate revenue growth”. Netflix hopes that the crackdown, combined with a cheaper ad-based subscription option, will help draw in more viewers and revenue.
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