This week, changes to Netflix’s United States Help Center page seemed to suggest that the company had found a solution to curb the Netflix password sharing after years of testing. However, these modifications were soon removed, causing uncertainty and anxiety over potential modifications to Netflix’s account sharing rules. The company has now made it clear that there were no changes made this week and no new restrictions are being implemented at present.
The confusion arose from a mistake in publishing content intended for one country’s Help Center page to other countries. This was compounded by the feature of Netflix Help Center pages that allow users to switch between country-specific information easily.
“For a brief time Tuesday, a Help Center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru went live in other countries. We have since updated it,” said a Netflix spokesperson in a statement.
However, the death knell for Netflix password sharing is still tolling. In its recent earnings call, Netflix said it will announce and begin to roll out account-sharing changes around the world in the first quarters of 2023.
“We’ve got folks that are watching Netflix who aren’t paying us as part of basically borrowing somebody else’s credentials. And our goal is over this year to basically work through that situation and convert many of those folks to be paid accounts or to have the account owner pay for them,” said Netflix’s COO and CPO, Gregory Peters, in the company’s most recent earnings call on January 19.
For almost a year, Netflix has been piloting an approach in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru in which the company is more serious about tying each account to a physical location or “household” and only allowing devices to regularly access the account from that place. Netflix has clarified that there have been no changes to its account sharing policies this week. The confusion arose from a mistake in publishing content meant for one country’s Help Center page to other countries.
Netflix uses IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity to track streaming locations. The company has added a paid sharing option, similar to family plans offered by services like Spotify, where subscribers can pay a reduced rate to grant shared account access to others with their own login.
In the coming weeks, Netflix plans to announce restrictions on account sharing, but for now, nothing has changed. On a different note, lawmakers in Congress are seeking to overhaul systems for handling classified US government data as more classified documents are found in the wrong places.
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Author: Lily Hay Newman
